Northwest Arkansas Democrat-Gazette
U.S. virus numbers near April peak
Arizona cases surge; Texas reins reopening
The daily number of confirmed coronavirus cases across the U.S. on Thursday approached the peak numbers previously reached in late April, raising concern among health experts and government officials.
U.S. officials estimate that 20 million Americans have been infected since the virus arrived in the United States, meaning the vast majority of the population remains susceptible to it.
The crisis worsened Thursday in Arizona where 23% of tests conducted over the past seven days have been positive, nearly triple the national average, and a record 415 patients were on ventilators.
In Texas, the governor who had made one of the most aggressive pushes in the nation to reopen his state after the spring’s pandemic shutdown, began to backtrack. Gov. Greg Abbott, a Republican, put off lifting any more restrictions and reimposed a ban on elective surgeries in some places to preserve hospital space after the number of patients statewide more than doubled in two weeks.
Some Arizona hospitals also have halted elective surgeries.
Nevada’s governor ordered that masks be worn in public, Las Vegas casinos included.
While expanded testing accounts for some of the nation’s increase, experts say indications are that the virus is making a comeback.
Daily deaths, hospitalizations and the percentage of tests that are coming back positive have been rising over the past few weeks in parts of the country, mostly the South and the West.
Mississippi saw its daiDozens
ly count of confirmed cases reach record highs twice this week.
“It’s not a joke. Really bad things are going to happen,” said Dr. Thomas Dobbs, Mississippi’s health officer.
REOPENING ON HOLD
“The last thing we want to do as a state is go backwards and close down businesses,” Abbott said as he halted the phased reopening of Texas’ economy.
Under the executive order announced Thursday, businesses that were already permitted to open can continue to operate under existing occupancy limits, but further reopening has been put on hold.
“This temporary pause will help our state corral the spread until we can safely enter the next phase of opening our state for business,” Abbott said.
The announcement, which followed a similar pause in North Carolina, came as Houston’s covid-19 outbreak accelerated at an exponential pace that will swamp the city’s medical infrastructure by the July 4 holiday, according to a leading disease specialist.
Even as Houston-area intensive-care wards approach full capacity, the worst is yet to come because of “the huge amount of transmission going on in our community,” said Peter Hotez, dean of the National School of Tropical Medicine at Baylor College of Medicine.
Current trends in Harris County, which includes Houston, indicate that the caseload will triple or quadruple by mid-July, Hotez said, citing modeling by the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia’s PolicyLab. Such a scenario would be “apocalyptic,” he said. “We can’t go there.”
Houston sprawls over many miles of swampy southeast Texas, a landscape of freeways and shopping malls largely unhindered by zoning. It has a metropolitan area of about 7 million residents, who compose one of the most diverse communities in the nation. And like other major cities in the state, its mainly Democratic leaders have found themselves at odds with Abbott and Republicans who have diluted urban power in politics.
Abbott was quick to follow the lead of President Donald Trump, encouraging businesses to operate despite the pandemic and forbidding mayors and county leaders from taking stringent measures to contain it. But the disease’s spread is increasingly dictating events.
On Wednesday, the Texas Medical Center warned that the region’s intensive-care capacity was quickly filling up and would soon force medical authorities to convert other facilities to ad hoc covid-19 wards. Harris County officials said they are prepared to reopen a field hospital at a professional football stadium if needed.
The trajectory of new cases is “going vertical,” Hotez said. “That’s what epidemic diseases classically do.”
LOUISIANA FIGHT
group of conservative House Republicans on Thursday restarted a stalled effort to override Gov. John Bel Edwards’ disaster orders.
The Republicans said the Democratic governor’s decision to maintain restrictions on businesses and churches for another 28 days spurred renewed interest in an extraordinary legal maneuver that would remove Louisiana’s state of emergency and reopen everything without restrictions.
Rep. Danny McCormick, a Republican from Oil City, urged his colleagues to support the petition circulated by Shreveport GOP Rep. Alan Seabaugh. The measure requires support from a majority of the House or Senate.
McCormick said Edwards has “shredded” the constitution.
“Somewhere along the line the common-sense approach has turned into a complete and utter loss of freedom — freedom to work and freedom to provide for our families,” McCormick said on the House floor. “In the name of health, we’re destroying our state. What we must ask ourselves is when will enough be enough?”
About two dozen lawmakers stood on the Louisiana Capitol steps to support the petition, representing about half of the 53 signatures needed to revoke the emergency order.
Edwards on Thursday officially extended the limitations on churches, restaurants, bars, retailers and other businesses until July 24, and he added a new 250-person limit on indoor gatherings.
Rep. C. Denise Marcelle, a Baton Rouge Democrat, said she wants businesses to reopen further, but “do we want people to die at the hands of covid? Do we want to risk people’s lives?”
WORRISOME RISES
Thursday’s estimate of 20 million infected Americans is roughly 10 times the 2.3 million cases that have been confirmed. Officials have long known that millions of people were infected without knowing it and that many cases are being missed because of gaps in testing.
The news comes as the Trump administration works to tamp down nationwide concern about the pandemic as about a dozen states see worrisome increases in cases.
The administration also is looking to get its scientific experts back before the public as it tries to allay anxieties while states continue reopening. Since mid-May, when the government began stressing the need to get the economy moving again, the administration’s public health experts have been far less visible than in the pandemic’s early weeks.
Twenty million infections means that about 6% of the nation’s 331 million people have been infected.
“It’s clear that many individuals in this nation are still susceptible,” Dr. Robert Redfield, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said in a call with reporters Thursday. “Our best estimate right now is that for every case that was reported, there actually are 10 more infections.”
Previously, CDC officials and the nation’s top infectious-disease expert, Dr. Anthony Fauci, have said that as many as 25% of infected people might not have symptoms.
“There’s an enormous number of people that are still vulnerable,” said Dr. Joshua Sharfstein, vice dean at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. “It still remains a potentially lethal disease. It’s a roll of the dice for everybody who gets the illness. Also, you’re rolling the dice for other people who you may give the virus to.”
“This is still serious,” Redfield said. But he noted that “we’re in a different situation today than we were in March or April,” with more cases now in younger people who are not as likely to develop serious illness or die from infection, he said.
Trump, who refuses to wear a mask in public, has sought to play down the risk. He told a crowd in Wisconsin on Thursday that the administration had done an “incredible job” fighting the virus and that “if we didn’t test, we wouldn’t have cases,” which ignores other indicators of the extent of the problem such as surging hospitalizations in some areas.
SURGE IN U.S.
The U.S. reported an increase of 34,500 covid-19 cases Wednesday, slightly fewer than the day before but still near the high of 36,400 reached April 24, according to a count kept by Johns Hopkins University. The daily average has climbed more than 50% over the past two weeks, an Associated Press analysis found. The true numbers are likely much higher because of limited testing and other factors.
Whether the rise in cases translates into a dire surge in deaths across the U.S. will depend on a number of factors, experts say, most crucially whether government officials make the right decisions. Deaths per day nationwide are around 600 after peaking at about 2,200 in mid-April.
“It is possible, if we play our cards badly and make a lot of mistakes, to get back to that level. But if we are smart, there’s no reason to get to 2,200 deaths a day,” said Dr. Ashish Jha, director of Harvard’s Global Health Institute.
The nation’s daily death toll has dropped markedly over the past few weeks even as cases climbed, a phenomenon experts said may reflect the advent of treatments, better efforts to prevent infections at nursing homes, and a rising proportion of cases among younger people, who are more likely than their elders to survive a bout with covid-19.
Several states have set single-day case records this week, including Arizona, California, Nevada, Texas and Oklahoma. Florida reported more than 5,000 new cases for a second day in a row.
Mississippi’s Dobbs cited a failure to wear masks and observe social-distancing practices.
“I’m afraid it’s going to take some kind of catastrophe for people to pay attention,” he said. “We are giving away those hard-fought gains for silly stuff.”
The U.S. has greatly ramped up testing in the past few months, and it is now presumably finding many less-serious cases that would have gone undetected earlier in the outbreak, when testing was limited and often focused on sicker people.
But there are other more clear-cut warning signs of a resurgence, including a rising number of deaths per day in states such as Arizona and Alabama.
The numbers “continue to go in the wrong direction,” Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey said Thursday. “We can expect our numbers will be worse next week and the week after.”
Also, “globally, it’s still getting worse,” said World Health Organization chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus.
AROUND THE WORLD
In Paris, the Eiffel Tower reopened to visitors Thursday after its longest peacetime closure of 104 days.
French President Emmanuel Macron is planning a new virus furlough program that could see the state covering a large share of lost incomes for as long as two years to protect jobs. He outlined the measure in a meeting with labor unions and business groups Wednesday.
Starting July 1, it aims for a compromise between blanket support and more targeted aid, by getting labor unions and businesses to strike deals on a case-bycase basis.
In England, police around the southern coastal town of Bournemouth urged people to stay away Thursday as thousands defied coronavirus social distancing rules and flocked to beaches on what was the U.K.’s hottest day of the year so far.
Amid widespread rule-breaking, a “major incident” was declared for the area. Images of the crammed beaches appeared to prompt the British government’s chief medical officer into issuing a rare warning on social media.
Professor Chris Whitty tweeted that covid-19 remains in “general circulation” and that cases will rise again if people don’t follow the guidelines. “Naturally people will want to enjoy the sun,” he said, “but we need to do so in a way that is safe for all.”
In India, with hospitals overwhelmed in New Delhi, troops provided care in railroad cars converted to medical wards.
Meanwhile, in China, an outbreak in Beijing appeared to have been brought under control.
Information for this article was contributed by Jennifer Peltz, Carla K. Johnson, Zeke Miller, Marilynn Marchione, Melinda Deslatte and staff members of The Associated Press; and by Joe Carroll, Emma Court, William Horobin and Ania Nussbaumof Bloomberg News.