INFECTIONS AND DEATHS SURGING IN FLORIDA
Amid crush of patients, hospital staff contract virus
Florida surpassed its daily record for coronavirus deaths Tuesday amid rising fears of a global resurgence.
Florida’s 132 additional deaths topped a state mark set just last week. The figure likely includes deaths from the past weekend that had not been previously reported.
The new deaths raised the state’s seven-day average to 81 per day, more than double the figure of two weeks ago and now the second-highest in the United States behind Texas.
With the virus spreading quickly in the southern and western U.S., one of the country’s top public health officials offered conflicting theories about what is
driving the outbreak.
“We tried to give states guidance on how to reopen safely. If you look critically, few states actually followed that guidance,” Dr. Robert Redfield, the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said Tuesday in a livestream interview with the editor of the Journal of the American Medical Association.
Redfield said people in many states did not adopt social distancing and other measures because they hadn’t previously experienced an outbreak. But he went on to say, without explanation, that he didn’t believe the way those states handled reopening was necessarily behind the explosive rise in virus cases. He offered a theory that infected travelers from elsewhere in the country might have brought the virus with them around Memorial Day.
CDC officials said that there are various possible explanations, and that Redfield was offering just one.
Doctors in Florida have predicted more deaths as daily reported cases have surged from about 2,000 a day a month ago to a daily average of about 11,000, including a record 15,000 on Sunday. The state recorded 9,194 new cases Tuesday.
Marlyn Hoilette, a nurse who spent four months working in the COVID-19 unit of her Florida hospital until testing positive recently, said hospitals are so desperate for staff to return to work they are not following guidelines that call for two negative tests first.
“Nurses are getting sick, nursing assistants are getting sick and my biggest fear is that it seems we want to return folks to work even without a negative test,” said Hoilette, who works at Palms West Hospital in Loxahatchee. Fla. “It’s just a matter of time before you wipe the other staff out if you’re contagious, so that is a big problem.”
Word of the rising toll in Florida came as Arizona officials tallied 4,273 newly confirmed cases of COVID-19.
The state, which became a virus hot spot after Republican Gov. Doug Ducey relaxed stay-at-home orders and other restrictions in May, reported 3,517 patients hospitalized because of the disease, a record high. Arizona’s death toll from COVID-19 rose to 2,337, with 92 additional deaths reported Tuesday.
Redfield urged Americans to wear masks to help contain the virus.
“At this critical juncture when COVID-19 is resurging, broad adoption of cloth face coverings is a civic duty, a small sacrifice reliant on a highly effective low-tech solution that can help turn the tide,” he and two colleagues wrote, in an editorial published online Tuesday by the journal of the American Medical Association.
However, a number of Americans are rejecting that advice, especially when being challenged at retail outlets.
In Florida, a maskless man was recorded on video shoving a Walmart employee who tried to block him from entering the store. At a Family Dollar store in Michigan, a security guard was killed after trying to enforce mask requirements. A Starbucks customer in Clairmont launched an expletiveladen tirade and social media blast against a barista who asked that she wear a mask.
The barista, Lenin Gutierrez, has received $100,000 through a Gofundme campaign since the incident.
Business owners say the majority of patrons gladly adhere to public health guidelines, but the minority who refuse are leaving retail and service workers frustrated and scared as coronavirus cases are on the rebound.
“A lot of us are nervous to come back to work, and then we finally do and this is the treatment we get?” said Andrew Ceacatura, a bartender at a Ted’s Bulletin in Washington, D.C. “It is soulcrushing, to be honest.”
In Britain, officials announced they will require people to wear face masks starting July 24, after weeks of dismissing their value.
“We are not out of the woods yet, so let us all do our utmost to keep this virus cornered and enjoy summer safely,” British Health Secretary Matt Hancock told lawmakers in the House of Commons.
French President Emmanuel Macron said masks will be required by Aug. 1, after recent rave parties and widespread backsliding on social distancing raised concerns the virus may be starting to rebound.
Even Melania Trump, whose husband President Donald Trump resisted wearing a mask or urging anyone else to do so, called on people to step up precautions.
“Even in the summer months, please remember to wear face coverings & practice social distancing,” she said Tuesday in a posting on her Twitter account. “The more precaution we take now can mean a healthier & safer country in the Fall.”
Meanwhile, the U.S., Canada and Mexico are poised to extend their agreements to keep their shared borders closed to nonessential travel to Aug. 21, officials said Tuesday
The agreements would extend the closures by another 30 days. A person familiar with the matter said final confirmation of the U.s.-canada agreement has yet occurred but is likely. The official was not authorized to speak publicly ahead of an announcement this week, and spoke on condition of anonymity. The restrictions were announced on March 18 and were extended in April, May and June.
Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said this week that a decision on the border would be announced later this week.
“We’re going to continue to work hard to keep Canadians safe and to keep our economies flowing, and we will have more to say later,” Trudeau said.
Mexican Foreign Affairs Secretary Marcelo Ebrard said on Friday that an opening between the U.S. and Mexico “wouldn’t be prudent right now,” given that coronavirus cases in “the states of the southern United States, California, New Mexico, Arizona and Texas, are on the rise.”
Most Canadians fear a reopening. The U.S. has more confirmed cases and deaths from COVID-19 than any country in the world while Canada has flattened the epidemic curve.
“We’ve done a good job of flattening the curve. We have an average of about 300 cases per day. In the U.S. they have about 60,000 cases per day,” said Dr. Howard Njoo, Canada’s Deputy Chief Public Health Officer.
“Canadians have made tremendous sacrifices and we are seeing the fruits of our labor. We don’t want to waste those efforts by reintroducing the virus in Canada,” he said.
Meanwhile, Disney officials announced that Hong Kong Disneyland Park is closing today until further notice following the city’s decision to ban public gatherings of more than four people to combat newly spreading infections.
India, which has the third-most cases after the U.S. and Brazil, was rapidly nearing 1 million cases with a jump of more than 28,000 reported Tuesday. It now has more than 906,000 and accumulated more than 100,000 in just four days.