Northwest Arkansas Democrat-Gazette
Military medics deploying as big states struggle to cope
FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. — Teams of military medics were deployed in Texas and California to help hospitals deluged by coronavirus patients, as Miami area authorities Friday began stepping up enforcement of a mask requirement — echoing efforts in many parts of the world to contain surging infections.
In Houston, an 86-person Army medical team worked to take over a wing of United Memorial Medical Center. In California, military doctors, nurses and other health care specialists were being deployed to eight hospitals facing staffing shortages amid record-breaking case numbers.
Several states have been reporting record numbers this week, contributing to a rise in the national death rate. The seven-day rolling average for daily new deaths has risen 34% from two weeks ago, while the case count in that period shot up 43%.
According to the tally kept by Johns Hopkins University, there are more than 3.6 million cases in the U.S., with more than 139,000 deaths as of Friday.
Florida reported 128 deaths Friday and 11,345 new cases.
Texas reported 10,000 new cases for the third straight day Thursday and 129 additional deaths. California reported its largest two-day total of confirmed cases, nearly 20,000, along with 258 deaths over 48 hours.
There were signs across the Sun Belt that the virus was stretching authorities’ capacity to respond. The medical examiner’s office in metro Phoenix has gotten portable storage coolers and ordered more to handle an influx of bodies.
In South Carolina, the number of patients hospitalized with covid-19 is increasing rapidly, while nurses and other workers are also getting infected when they are off work, said Dr. Wendell James, a senior vice president with Prisma Health who is based in Greenville.
In Florida, Miami- Dade County’s commission gave code and fire inspectors authority to issue tickets of up to $100 for individuals and $500 for businesses not complying with guidelines for masks and social distancing. Police officers already had enforcement power.
“We’re going to put a heck of a lot of people out there,” said Mayor Carlos Gimenez. “Our people are going to go everywhere.”
Gimenez said that too few people, especially younger people, have been following the “new normal” guidelines, so the county needed another enforcement tool.
At least half of the states, including Arkansas, have adopted requirements for wearing face coverings.
GEORGIA LEADERS AT ODDS
Georgia’s governor and the mayor of its largest city accused each other of playing politics Friday amid an escalating fight over masks that flared as Atlanta and more than a dozen other cities and counties defied Republican Gov. Brian Kemp’s ban and issued local orders requiring masks be worn in public spaces.
The dispute ratcheted up several notches this week, leading to tough talk Friday from both the governor and Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms, who accused President Donald Trump of violating the city’s mask requirement.
On Wednesday, Kemp issued an executive order that explicitly voided local mask requirements. That same day, Trump arrived in Atlanta for a visit without wearing a mask. On Thursday, Kemp sued the city to block it from enforcing a mask mandate and other rules related to the pandemic.
Bottoms stuck to her guns in an interview Friday on CBS’ “This Morning,” questioning the timing of the lawsuit and calling out Trump.
“I pointed out that Donald Trump violated that order when he landed at our airport and did not wear a mask,” she said. She declined to say that Trump was behind Kemp’s lawsuit but said the president “was violating the rules of our city in just a blatant disregard for the science.”
The White House said the president and all who get close to him get tested regularly.
“The President takes the health and safety of everyone traveling in support of himself and all White House operations very seriously,” White House spokesman Judd Deere said in a statement. “When preparing for and carrying out any travel, White House Operations collaborates with the Physician to the President and the White House Military Office, to ensure plans incorporate current CDC guidance and best practices for limiting covid- 19 exposure to the greatest extent possible.”
A spokeswoman for Kemp said the lawsuit had no connection with Trump’s visit.
Kemp defended the lawsuit during a news conference Friday, accusing Atlanta officials of playing politics and not enforcing state orders already in effect.
The lawsuit was filed “on behalf of business owners, their employees and hardworking Georgians throughout the region who continue to struggle to make ends meet,” Kemp said.
“Mayor Bottoms’ mask mandate cannot be enforced, but her decision to shutter businesses and undermine economic growth is devastating,” Kemp said.
LOCKDOWNS MIGHT RETURN
Millions of Americans face a second round of lockdowns even as the economy struggles to recover from the first.
A document prepared for the White House Coronavirus Task Force identified 18 states, including Arkansas, in the “red zone” of fast-rising virus cases, the Center for Public Integrity, a nonprofit news organization, reported Thursday. Such states, according to the document, should consider mask requirements, closing bars and gyms and limiting social gatherings.
With daily case counts now far beyond the first round of infections this spring and deaths rising again after months of decline, officials in some states and cities have already paused reopening efforts or started rolling them back.
Those decisions would be excruciating after the economic devastation wrought by the first round of orders this spring, but they are getting nearer. Case numbers are climbing in all but six states, according to data tracked by Johns Hopkins University.
In the absence of a national strategy, state and local officials keep pushing familiar — and thus far ineffective — preventive measures, but many said they are running out of soft options. They raise the prospect of stringent lockdowns to encourage voluntary virtue.
Colorado Gov. Jared Polis on Thursday announced a statewide mask order, and said further measures would be unpalatable.
“There’s not a resident of Colorado and there’s not an elected official in Colorado that doesn’t want to do everything they can to avoid having to ever stay at home again for a long period of time,” Polis said.
Even in states such as Illinois, which has among the country’s lowest positivity rates, Gov. J.B. Pritzker has warned that more restrictions could be on the way if socializing in large groups and avoiding masks leads to a rebound in case counts. Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot has said she does not want to go backward but will if needed.
“Some of you have joked that I am like the mom who will turn the car around when you are acting up,” Lightfoot said during a Wednesday news conference. “No friends, it’s actually worse. I won’t just turn the car around. I am going to shut it off. I am going to kick you out, and I am going to make you walk home.”
RESISTANCE PERSISTS
In Florida, Miami- Dade County’s Gimenez said “everything is on the table,” but he is waiting to see if recently implemented measures curb infections. He has closed indoor dining, movie theaters and casinos and added a 10 p.m. curfew.
In Texas, where the virus threatens to overwhelm hospitals and morgues, Houston Mayor Sylvester Turner told CNN that his city needs a collective effort, “maybe a two-week stay-home, worksafe order reset to cool things off and then gradually move forward again.”
And one of Gov. Greg Abbott’s top medical advisers this week told the Houston Chronicle that the outbreak is getting bad enough to warrant lockdowns in some locations.
Elsewhere, fights continue over the last round of restrictions.
In Kentucky, the Republican attorney general Thursday asked a state court to block a mask-wearing order from the Democratic governor. He also is trying to block social-distancing restrictions and business-occupancy limits.
Across the country, in Los Angeles, lockdowns may not be needed immediately, said Robert Kim- Farley, a professor of epidemiology at the University of California at Los Angeles. He said the county could wait until early August to decide. By then, he expects the effects of pullbacks — including the recent closure of bars and indoor dining — will decrease hospitalizations.
“It’s like a slow- turning supertanker,” he said. “You turn things on, and it take a few weeks before you see the results. Then you try to correct those results, but it takes another two to three weeks to see the results of that correction.”
Such corrections keep coming. Puerto Rico Gov. Wanda Vazquez on Thursday for a second time closed the island’s bars, movie theaters and casinos, even as she acknowledged the economic pain her orders would inflict.
Officials still face resistance from people who consider masks an overreaction, or an infringement of their rights, as well as from young residents convinced the virus won’t seriously hurt them if they catch it. And they acknowledge that many Americans have grown weary of fighting the pandemic.
CRACKDOWN AT THE CAPITOL
In Washington, House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, in an about-face, will require his GOP colleagues to wear masks when they gather Tuesday for a conference, according to a summary of his directive obtained Friday.
McCarthy has previously said lawmakers should wear masks at the Capitol, but he hadn’t been insisting on it. Democrats have complained that some Republicans have been appearing without masks at in-person hearings or on the House floor.
The guidelines for those attending Tuesday’s in-person Republican-only conference are explicit — masks are required, temperatures will be checked at the door and social-distancing measures will be strictly enforced.
McCarthy’s directive, according to the copy obtained by Bloomberg News, also indicates that spacing requirements mean that not all 197 House Republicans will be able to attend the meeting.
“We only have enough seats for 131 Members, so RSVPs are required,” it says. The guidelines were also spelled out to members during a GOP conference call Wednesday.
A few House Republicans have complained about such requirements in recent weeks, echoing disputes across the country.
SURGES ACROSS GLOBE
Worldwide, governments are trying to prevent and control fresh outbreaks and keep their economies running as the pandemic accelerates in some regions and threatens to come roaring back in others. Confirmed cases numbered more than 13.9 million globally Friday, and deaths topped 590,000.
To cope with the pandemic’s fallout, the United Nations said it is increasing to $10.3 billion its appeal for humanitarian aid.
Jens Laerke, a spokesman for the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, said in Geneva that the number of people who need assistance has more than doubled during the pandemic to about 250 million.
India’s total confirmed cases surpassed 1 million, the third-highest number behind the United States and Brazil, and its death toll passed 25,000. That followed Brazil’s announcement Thursday that its confirmed cases exceeded 2 million, including 76,000 deaths.
The continuing surge in India — where experts believe the vast majority of cases are still being missed — drove home concerns about the readiness of some countries to cope with outbreaks that could test feeble health care systems.
In sub- Saharan Africa, which already had the world’s greatest shortage of medical personnel, nearly 10,000 health workers in 40 countries have been infected with the coronavirus, the World Health Organization said.
In Spain, which earlier in the pandemic was one of the world’s hardest-hit countries, health authorities asked the 5.5 million residents of Barcelona to stay home as much as possible to stem the virus’s spread.