The US coronavirus outbreak crossed a grim new milestone of over 3 million confirmed cases on Tuesday as more states reported record numbers of new infections, and Florida faced an impending shortage of intensive care unit hospital beds.
Authorities have reported alarming upswings of daily caseloads in roughly two dozen states over the past two weeks, a sign that efforts to control transmission of the novel coronavirus have failed in large swaths of the country.
California, Hawaii, Missouri, Montana, Oklahoma and Texas on Tuesday shattered their previous daily record highs for new cases. About 24 states have also reported disturbingly high infection rates as a percentage of diagnostic tests conducted over the past week.
In Texas alone, the number of hospitalized patients more than doubled in just two weeks.
The trend has driven many more Americans to seek out COVID-19 screenings. The US Department of Health and Human Services said on Tuesday it was adding short-term “surge”testing sites in three metropolitan areas in Florida, Louisiana and Texas.
In Houston, a line of more than 200 cars snaked around the United Memorial Medical Center as people waited for hours in sweltering heat to get tested. Some had arrived the night beforet o secure a place in line at the drive-through site.
“I got tested because my younger brother got positive,” said Fred Robles, 32, who spent the night in his car. “There’s so many people that need to get tested, there’s nothing you can do about it.”
Dean Davis, 32, who lost his job due to the pandemic, said he arrived at the testing site at 3 a.m. on Tuesday after he waited for hours on Monday but failed to make the cutoff.
“I was like, let me get here at 3, maybe nobody will be here,” Davis said. “I got here, there was a line already.”
In Florida, more than four dozen hospitals across 25 of 67 counties reported their ICUs had reached full capacity, data published by the state’s Agency for Health Care Administration showed. Only 17% of the total 6 010 adult ICU beds statewide were available on Tuesday, down from 20% three days ago.
Health officials are bracing for a wave of further hospitalizations that could strain healthcare systems in densely populated areas, leading to an uptick in deaths from the COVID-19 respiratory illness. Increased deaths tend to lag a rise in new cases by a month or longer.
More than 130 000 Americans have died from the illness – about a quarter of the global total. A widely cited model from the University of Washington’s Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation projected on Tuesday that US deaths would reach 208 000 by November 1.
Coronavirus cases in Florida, a state with a large elderly population, have soared in the last month, with the daily count of new cases topping 10 000 three times in the last week. COVID-19 fatalities were up nearly 19% in the last week compared with the week prior, bringing the state’s death toll to more than 3 800.
“A lot of this is being driven by young people, under 40… They’re less at risk,” Florida Governor Ron DeSantis said at a news conference in Miami about the spike in new cases.
‘Pressure on Governors’
US President Donald Trump, who has pushed for the reopening of the US economy and urged Americans to return to their daily lives, said on Tuesday he would pressure state governors to open schools in the fall.
The Republican president, speaking at the White House, said some people wanted to keep schools closed for political reasons. “No way, so we’re very much going to put pressure on governors and everybody else to open the schools.”
Colleges and universities have been forced to adjust reopening plans, including altering their calendars and holding some courses online. Harvard University said on Monday all of its courses would be online for the upcoming academic year.
New COVID-19 infections are rising in 42 states, based on a Reuters analysis of the past two weeks compared to the prior two, putting the Unites States close to 3 million total cases.
In Arizona, another hotspot, the rate of coronavirus tests coming back positive rose to 26% for the week ended July 5. The World Heath Organisation considers a rate over 5% to be troubling.
