© Carolyn Cole / Los Angeles Times / Getty Images
MC ALLEN, TEXAS -July 20, 2020- Nurses Catrina Rugar (second from left), Hannah Woodward (second from right), and Veronica Gomez (right) clinical coordinator at Doctors Hospital at Renaissance in Edinburg, Texas, treat a patient, in one of several new COVID-19 units. The coronavirus is spreading rapidly through the Rio Grande Valley in Texas, where people of all ages are becoming infected at family gatherings. (Carolyn Cole / Los Angeles Times via Getty Images)
The United States topped 4 million officially registered Covid-19 cases Thursday, and a quarter of that count occurred in the past 15 days.
The country’s increasing daily rate of confirmed coronavirus cases, along with an almost record number of hospitalizations, indicates that the United States is far from containing a virus that is depleting hospitals and laboratories, health experts say.
“We have essentially regressed two months of progress with what we are seeing in various cases … in the United States,” said Dr. Ali Khan, dean of the University of Nebraska Medical Center School of Public Health, told him to CNN on Thursday.
Some 59,600 people were hospitalized with Covid-19 in the US on Wednesday, about 300 below the country’s peak recorded in mid-April, according to the Covid Tracking Project.
The United States has officially registered 4,005,414 cases, according to Johns Hopkins University. At least 143,820 people have died.
The reported count is increasing: The seven-day national average of new daily cases was 67,429 on Wednesday, a record.
It took almost 100 days for the country to count its first 1 million cases, from January 21 to April 28. It took just 15 days to go from 3 million on July 8 to 3.99 million, according to JHU figures.
Many Covid-19 diseases were undiagnosed, especially at the beginning of the pandemic, when evidence was less available. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have said that true case totals are probably more than 10 times higher than official figures in most places. A study suggested that the United States may have had more than 8 million cases in March alone.
But doctors are sounding alarms about increasing hospitalizations across the country, and especially at critical points in the nation, such as parts of Florida.
More than 50 hospitals have reached capacity in their intensive care units, and only 15% of the state’s ICU beds are available, the Agency for Health Care Administration said.
“Any increase in cases or increase in hospitalizations will jeopardize our emergency system and hospital systems,” Dr. Damian Caraballo, an emergency room physician in Tampa, told CNN.
The spread has promised a bleak outlook for the coming months, according to health officials and President Trump.
What comes next is unclear: Now that at least 41 states require covering their faces, some have said that strict measures like limiting meetings and enforcing social distancing and masks can be as shocking as another blockade. But others are not so hopeful.
“Masks will help, but I think we need much more than masks to contain this epidemic that is going through our country like a freight train,” said William Haseltine, president and chairman of global health expert group ACCESS Health International.
“Until we see major behavioral changes and until we see that public health services are stepping forward with many more resources, we are not sure we will contain this.”
Track the virus
Birx warns of worrying increases in 12 cities
Meanwhile, the coordinator of the White House coronavirus task force, Dr. Deborah Birx, privately told a group of state and local health officials about a troubling increase in coronavirus cases in 12 cities.
“There are cities that are lagging behind, and we have further increases in Miami, New Orleans, Las Vegas, San Jose, St. Louis, Indianapolis, Minneapolis, Cleveland, Nashville, Pittsburgh, Columbus and Baltimore, so we are tracking this very closely,” he said Wednesday, according to audio obtained by the nonprofit journalism Center for Public Integrity.
“We are working with state officials to make sure we are responding together, but when you see test positivity increase, that’s when mitigation efforts begin,” he said in the call.
Separately, Birx publicly said that an increase in new cases across the South and Southwest has been linked to Americans’ travel for Memorial Day and reopens.
“This epidemic appeared throughout the south and west after June 10 simultaneously,” he told Fox News. “We saw a wide spread of virus between counties, rural areas, small yards, and big yards, throughout the south, southwest, and west, almost simultaneously.
Some American leaders have admitted that parts of the country reopened their economies too soon. And as they did, residents were too quick to go back to old habits: crowding bars, crowding beaches on hot summer days, barbecued, and vacationing with friends.
Hoping to curb the spread, at least 27 states have either paused or reversed their reopening plans. In Houston on Wednesday, Mayor Sylvester Turner spoke again in favor of a second order to stay home. In Los Angeles, the mayor said the city was “on the verge” of another lockdown.
Coronavirus: your questions answered
Louisiana becomes the 12th state to exceed 100,000 reported cases
Louisiana, where the governor said earlier this month that June progress against the virus had been eliminated in weeks, joined other 11 states Thursday that reported a total of more than 100,000 infections.
Louisiana reached 101,650 cases, the state health department said. The other states are California (with most cases in the nation), New York, Florida, Texas, New Jersey, Illinois, Georgia, Arizona, Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, and North Carolina.
Texas broke its record for hospitalizations two days in a row this week, with 10,848 patients reported Tuesday and 10,893 reported Wednesday. It also reported its highest number of deaths in a single day: 197.
Florida reported its highest one-day death toll Thursday: 173.
Florida has been sending nurses to hospitals that need more staff. More than 50 hospitals have requested a total of 2,400 additional nurses, and so far more than 1,000 have been dispatched, the state said.
Miami has announced increased penalties for people who fail to comply with its mandate to wear masks in public. The warnings have been removed, and the first and second offenses are now punishable by fines of $ 100. The third could lead to an arrest, the city said Wednesday.
On Wednesday, Governor Ron DeSantis said parents should have the option of sending their children back to the classroom or to learn digitally from home, adding that “the costs of keeping schools closed are huge.”
9-year-old boy is youngest to die of Covid-19 in Florida, authorities say
Coronavirus may be the second leading cause of death so far this year in Los Angeles County
California outnumbered New York for most cases in the nation this week. With more than 420,000 cases, the state has seen a recent increase, while infections reported by New York have slowed significantly. California hit another peak in new cases, reporting 12,807 positive tests in one day, Governor Gavin Newsom said Wednesday.
Los Angeles County health officials announced that the virus is on track to be the second leading cause of death in the county, with at least 3,400 deaths in the first six months of the year.
That would mean the disease will cost more lives than Alzheimer’s disease and strokes, health officials said. Coronary heart disease, the leading cause of death, claimed 6,000 lives in the first six months of 2019.
The news comes after the county reported 2,232 hospitalized patients on Monday, breaking its own record for daily hospitalizations at least four times in a week. There were 2,207 confirmed cases hospitalized Wednesday, 27% of which are in the ICU, health officials said.
Meanwhile, San Francisco is on “high alert” after averaging 79 new cases every day this week and seeing a 23% increase in hospitalizations, Public Health Director Grant Colfax said Wednesday.
Those two numbers play a key role in helping officials determine whether to pause or reverse the reopening, Colfax added.
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