U.S. Coronavirus Infections Hit Another Daily Record
Acceleration in cases prompts authorities in states including Texas and Florida to impose new restrictions
Coronavirus cases continued to surge in the U.S., as Florida reported another record-breaking number of new confirmed infections on Saturday, the second day in a row that it broke such a record.
Florida, Texas, California and Arizona have accounted for much of the recent rise in cases, prompting authorities to impose new restrictions in those states and reverse their reopenings.
The U.S. recorded more than 45,000 cases Friday, according to data compiled by Johns Hopkins University. The tally was significantly higher than the 39,972 cases reported Thursday, a record at the time. The previous high of 36,291 daily cases was recorded in late April.
According to the Florida Department of Health, the state reported 9,636 cases on Saturday, up from 8,831 cases on Friday and a much lower 4,966 cases on Wednesday. The rate of positive cases has also jumped. On June 13, the rate of positive tests was at 5.36% and has steadily climbed over the last two weeks, registering a positivity rate of above 14% in the last two days.
Florida, like other hot spots in Texas and Arizona, faces the challenge of trying to convince people to stay home, which is harder to do on a summer weekend with a forecast for nice weather.
Florida’s Gov. Ron DeSantis said Friday that the record-breaking number of cases this week was primarily a result of “a big test dump,” but he said the rate of positive tests had gone up considerably since May.
Texas and Florida, which had been among the last states to shut down and among the earliest to reopen, took steps to keep people at home. On Friday, Florida imposed new restrictions on bars, and Texas Gov. Greg Abbott closed down bars across the state as Houston issued a stay-at-home order.
The U.S. accounts for more than 25% of the more than 9.8 million cases world-wide, according to data from Johns Hopkins, which many experts say likely understates the true toll of the pandemic.
More than 495,000 people have died globally from Covid-19, about 125,000 of them in the U.S.
The World Health Organization says it expects total global cases to pass 10 million next week. On Friday, the WHO and two global health nonprofits announced plans to procure two billion doses of an eventual coronavirus vaccine to distribute to developing nations.
Mr. Abbott’s move to close bars marks a turnaround for the governor, who earlier this week said he didn’t want to backtrack on reopening. Mr. Abbott has explicitly banned local jurisdictions from forcing people to cover their faces and in late April, while announcing reopening measures, said his earlier lockdown executive order had “done its job.”
But as the number of infections in Texas climbed, particularly among young people, Mr. Abbott moved to enact restrictions.
“At this time, it is clear that the rise in cases is largely driven by certain types of activities, including Texans congregating in bars,” Mr. Abbott said in a statement.
Democratic members of Congress from Florida have been pressing Mr. DeSantis, a Republican, to implement a statewide mask mandate as infections rise throughout the state. But he has resisted such calls, leaving it instead to local authorities.
Mayor Carlos Gimenez in Florida’s Miami-Dade County said Friday that beaches in the county would close for the coming Fourth of July weekend.
After reporting 103 new cases on Friday, the city of San Francisco, among the first in the nation to issue a stay-at-home order, paused the Monday reopening of business including hair salons, barbershops and outdoor bars.
“At our current rate, the number could double rapidly,” Mayor London Breed wrote on Twitter. “If that continues and we don’t intervene, we’ll be at such a high number that our only option would be to shut down.”
At the first coronavirus task force briefing in nearly two months, Vice President Mike Pence heralded the reopening of the economy and said the U.S. is making progress on coronavirus, despite mounting cases in more than 20 states.
“There may be a tendency among the American people to think we are back to the place we were two months ago, that we are in a time of great losses and great hardship of the American people,” Mr. Pence said Friday at the briefing. “The reality is we are in a much better place.”
Still, Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, warned that areas that have seen cases come down or haven’t been hard-hit by coronavirus are at risk when the virus surges in other parts of the country.
Deborah Birx, the task force’s coordinator, said that the antiviral drug remdesivir, which is used in treating coronavirus, has been reallocated to states that are being hit hard. Federal officials have said supplies are dwindling and will run out this month.
The U.S.’s inability to get a handle on the virus also spurred European Union member states to propose keeping a restriction on American travelers when the bloc reopens next week, even as citizens from 15 other countries, including Canada, Japan and possibly China, may be allowed to travel again to the EU.
Covid-19 deaths haven’t yet seen the same increases as cases and hospitalizations, in part because the expansion of testing in the U.S. is identifying more mild and moderate cases. But infectious-disease epidemiologists caution that deaths typically lag behind other indicators in the data, as the disease often progresses over the course of several weeks in the most severe cases.
Outside the U.S., Tokyo reported 57 new cases on Saturday, the most since a state of emergency was lifted a month ago. The capital’s infections, which have made up more than half the national total recently, are largely among young people, so the number of people in serious condition continues to shrink.
Australia reported 47 new cases of infection on Saturday, the highest daily count since April 17. And New South Wales, the nation’s most populous state, implemented mandatory coronavirus testing for all returning travelers.
New South Wales reported six new cases Saturday, while the remaining 41 cases were in Victoria State. Authorities there sent text messages to residents in affected areas telling them to get tested and to expect health officers conducting door-to-door visits.