Hospital administrators and health experts warned on Wednesday that some parts of the united States are on the verge of being overwhelmed by a resurgence of the coronavirus, and expressed regret that politicians and the public weary of closures are leaving that disaster to happen.
The united states recorded a total of 34,700 new cases of COVID-19 in a day, the highest figure in two months, from the peak of 36,400 registered in mid-April, according to the count maintained by the Johns Hopkins University.
Even though new confirmed cases have been declining steadily in sites with outbreaks early in the united States, such as New York and New Jersey, several other states set records for one day this week, including Arizona, California, Mississippi, Nevada and Texas. Some of them broke in addition to records of hospital admissions, as it happened in North Carolina and South Carolina.
The united states reached this Wednesday the number of 2,385,348 confirmed cases of COVID-19 and the of 122,450 deceased, in accordance with the count independent of NBC News.
New York remains the state hardest hit by the pandemic with 398,105 confirmed cases and 32,079 dead.
New York will continue to the neighboring New Jersey (173,475 cases and 13,004 deceased), Massachusetts (107,611 infections and 7,938 deaths) and Illinois (138,540 positive and 6,770 dead).
In Pennsylvania there are 87,733 cases, of which 6,573 have resulted in deaths. Meanwhile, in Michigan, have been confirmed 68,555 infections and 6,114 deaths.
California currently has 192,537 infections and 5,677 deaths, while in Connecticut there are 45,899 infected and 4,277 deceased. Florida reached 109,014 cases and 3,281 deceased, at the time that Louisiana collects 52,477 infections and 3,152 deaths.
“People became complacent,” said dr. Marc Boom, director general of the hospital system Houston Methodist. “And the virus is returning and golpeándonos, frankly”.
The stock market plunged considerably on Wednesday after the resurgence of the virus cast a shadow over hopes for a quick economic recovery. The virus has been blamed for more than 122,000 deaths in the united States and more than 2.3 million of confirmed infections.
California, the most populous state, reported more than 7,100 new cases. The count in Florida grew by 5,500 in a day, an increase of 25% compared to the record of the previous week and three times the level just two weeks ago.
In Texas, which began to lift the restrictions of the confinement may 1, the hospital admissions have doubled, and the new cases to triple in two weeks.
Governor Greg Abbott told the channel KFDA-TV that the state goes through a “massive outbreak” and may require new local restrictions to preserve space for hospitalizations in some places.
In the eight hospitals of Houston Methodist in Texas, the count of patients with COVID-19 has increased threefold in the last month, at 312. Approximately 20% of the testing of coronavirus that are now the hospitals are positive, compared with between 2% and 4% in mid-may.
If that trend doesn’t change, the chain of hospitals with 2,000 beds would be 600 patients with coronavirus in the next three weeks and would be forced to cancel surgeries not essential, said Boom.
“We need everyone to behave perfectly and work together perfectly,” to slow down the rate of infections, said Boom. “When I see a restaurant or a business in which the people are not following the guidelines, where they are abandoning the caution, that makes me mad”.
In Arizona, the cases will likely exceed the capacity of beds in the hospitals of the state in the coming weeks if the trend continues, said dr. Joseph Gerald, a professor of political of public health of the University of Arizona.
“We are in serious trouble,” said Gerald, who called the state to impose new restrictions on business, something that the republican governor Doug Ducey has refused to do. Without such measures, says Gerald, the balance of deaths will occur at levels “unprecedented”.
Dr. Peter Hotez, an expert in infectious diseases, said that he is concerned that the states wasted the time they have left to prevent a crisis much greater.
“We are still speaking of subtleties, we are discussing if we should wear masks or not, and we still do not understand that a vaccine is not going to rescue,” said Hotez, of the School of Medicine, Baylor, Texas.
Initially, governor Abbott, also a republican, forbade local officials penalized or multaran people for not wearing masks when he began to be reopened by the state. After cases are fired, Abbott said last week that cities and counties could allow the business would require masks.
In Florida, several counties and cities have recently begun to require face masks in public places and penalizing businesses that do comply with the regulations of estrangement public.
In an indication of the change of the outbreak in the country, New York, Connecticut and New Jersey, announced that it will require visitors from states with high rates of infection must be quarantined for 14 days. It is a change from march, when the governor of Florida Ron DeSantis issued a similar order for the visitors to the New York area, where then were an increase in cases.
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