Several states see virus surge
Grim milestones as pandemic worsens in Texas, Ariz. and Fla.
The daily number of deaths from the coronavirus has risen recently in some of the nation’s most populous states, leaving behind grieving families and signaling a possible end to months of declining death totals nationally.
On Friday, Texas surpassed 10,000 hospitalized patients for the first time, capping a week of grim markers that also saw the state exceed 10,000 new cases in a single day. And it has been the deadliest week of the pandemic in Texas, with 95 new deaths reported Friday.
Republican Gov. Greg Abbott, who on Friday extended a statewide disaster order first issued in March, is now telling the public to brace for what’s ahead.
“Things will get worse,” Abbott told Lubbock television station KLBK. “The worst is yet to come as we work our way through that massive increase in people testing positive.”
Arizona reported more than 4,000 newly confirmed coronavirus cases on Friday — still the highest rate of infection per capita in the nation. State officials also reported 44 additional deaths, pushing the overall count to 2,082, a number that has doubled in the past five weeks.
In Florida, a record 435 newly hospitalized patients were reported Friday to have tested positive for the virus, including some who sought care for other reasons and aren’t necessarily symptomatic. There were 6,806 patients being treated for COVID-19 in Florida hospitals, according to a new tally state officials started releasing Friday.
On Thursday, state officials reported 120 deaths in one day, the highest number since the previous record of 113 in early May.
Mississippi and Tennessee also set single-day death records this week.
The seven-day death average in the United States reached 608 on Thursday, up from 471 earlier in July but still a fraction of the more than 2,200 deaths the country averaged each day in mid-April, when the situation in the Northeast was at its worst.
Health experts cautioned it was too early to predict a continuing trend from only a few days of data. But the rising pace of deaths in the Sun Belt followed weeks of mounting cases in the region and suggested an end to the country’s nearly three-month period of declines in daily counts of virus deaths — a pattern that had been seen as one of the rare bright spots in the nation’s virus outlook.
That steadily downward trend in daily deaths began in April after states instituted stay-at-home orders, and it continued through
June after states reopened their economies. The decline had continued over the past month even as cases of the virus skyrocketed in the South and West.
Deaths occur weeks after infections, so any rise in deaths would be expected to come later than a rise in cases. But public health experts said the diverging trends — newly rising cases but still declining daily deaths — had occurred largely because the new surge of virus cases also involved many younger and healthier people, who were less likely to become seriously ill or die. Still, many experts predicted that the declining death tolls were unlikely to last as the virus continued spreading, passing from younger people to older people and those who are more vulnerable to the most dire effects of the virus.
“We’ve always said the deaths are going to be coming soon enough, and now they are,” said Dr. Peter Jay Hotez, dean of the National School of Tropical Medicine at Baylor College of Medicine.
The age range of those who have died in recent days was not yet clear nationwide, although health officials in some communities said they were continuing to mainly see deaths among older people.
Dr. David Lakey, a former commissioner of the Texas Department of State Health Services and a member of a coronavirus task force created by the Texas Medical Association, said it was too early to tell if this week’s rise in the daily death toll in Texas should be seen as a sustained trend.
He said that reporting delays by officials over the July Fourth weekend might have contributed to an appearance of elevated numbers of deaths in Texas this week. But he also noted that hospitals in the state were filling quickly, a sign that there were a growing number of seriously ill patients.
Louisiana has seen a major uptick in cases of the virus, but public health officials say they have not seen a rise in the daily death toll.
“We’re waiting,” said
Sean Ellis, public information officer of the Louisiana Department of Public Health.
But the daily death toll might not rise significantly, he said, because the patient population is younger. In March, only 11% of patients were between the age of 18 and 29. Today. About 32% of patients fall into that age bracket now.