US posts record 53,000 new coronavirus cases
MIAMI: The United States posted a record 53,000 new coronavirus cases as the deadly pandemic accelerated across the Americas, but its slowdown in Europe led Britain to announce Friday the first exemptions to its quarantine rules.
With Europe looking to turn the page on the biggest public health crisis in modern history, travelers arriving into Britain from Germany, France, Spain and Italy will no longer be required to self-isolate starting July 10.
Touching almost every country on Earth, Covid-19 – the disease brought on by the virus – has hit at least 10.7 million people and killed 516,000 globally, shattering previously buoyant economies and bringing public life to a standstill.
Yet while much of the planet pursued a return to some semblance of normality, the United States soared past 50,000 new infections Thursday for the second time in two days, casting a grim pall over its upcoming Independence Day celebrations.
Now the epicenter of the pandemic, the country has recorded nearly 129,000 deaths out of more than 2.7 million cases. It’s expected to record its three millionth infection next week.
Florida, which now has more than 169,000 cases, is a key focus of public health experts who worry about a surge in southern and western US states.
Florida Governor Ron DeSantis blamed the rise on “social interactions” among young people gathering at parties, beaches, bars, swimming pools and elsewhere, as well as a more “robust” testing program.
In Texas, where more than 2,500 people have died, Governor Greg Abbott ordered people in counties with 20 or more cases to wear masks and banned gatherings of more than 10.
The move came after Texas reported nearly 8,000 new cases on Thursday, amid a record spike in infections that led to the governor largely halting the reopening program that started in early May.
States that reopened their economies the earliest and fastest after the pandemic struck – and against the advice of federal health authorities – are now experiencing the highest caseloads.
Florida and other so-called “Sun Belt” states have been forced to re-shut restaurants, bars and beaches as the nation braces for the July 4 weekend.
These include California, which has seen a 56 per cent increase in hospitalisations over two weeks, Governor Gavin Newsom said.
The World Health Organisation (WHO) warned on Wednesday that the pandemic was accelerating, with more than half of the world’s infections over the past half year recorded in June alone. And the past week has seen new highs, with cases topping “160,000 on every single day,” WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said.
Cases have been skyrocketing across Latin America. Brazil, the region’s largest economy, has almost 1.5 million confirmed cases, second only to the United States.
Indigenous people across Latin America have been particularly hard hit due to weak immune systems and centuries of state neglect.