Miami rolls back dining out as US cases rise by 50,000 a day

MIAMI: Florida’s greater Miami area has become the latest United States coronavirus hot spot to roll back its reopening, ordering restaurant dining closed yesterday as Covid19 cases surged nationwide by the tens of thousands and the US death toll topped 130,000.

Restaurants were targeted for a weekend crackdown on coronavirus enforcement in

California also, where hospitalisations for Covid19 had jumped by 50% over the past two weeks and the state capitol building in Sacramento was temporarily closed for deep cleaning.

For an eighth straight day, Texas registered a record number of people hospitalised at any one moment with the highly contagious respiratory illness, up more than 500 admissions from the day before to nearly 8700.

The US military said it would deploy a special 50member medical team, including emergencyroom and criticalcare nurses and respiratory specialists, to a hardhit area in and around San Antonio.

California, Texas and Florida are all among two dozen states reporting high infection rates (as a percentage of diagnostic tests conducted over the past week), an alarming sign of a virus still spreading largely unchecked throughout much of the country.

‘‘It’s a serious situation that we have to address immediately,’’ said Dr Anthony Fauci, the nation’s top infectious disease specialist and member of the White House coronavirus task force.

Covid19 infections were on the rise in 39 states, according to an analysis of cases over the past two weeks, the US as a whole averaging some 50,000 new cases nearly every 24 hours in recent days. Sixteen states had posted record daily case counts so far this month.

More states were also reporting a troubling increase in the percentage of Covid19 diagnostic tests that come back positive — a key indicator of community spread that experts refer to as the rate of ‘‘positivity’’.

Two dozen states, mostly in the South and West, have averaged positivity rates over the past week exceeding 5%, a level the World Health Organisation considers concerning. — Reuters