Covid-19: Florida reports record one-day deaths as concerns grow for other states
Florida reported another record oneday rise in coronavirus deaths on Tuesday, and cases in Texas passed the 400,000 mark, fueling fear that the United States is still not taking control of the outbreak and adding pressure on Congress to pass another massive economic aid package.
Public health experts are becoming concerned about the levels of infection in states such as Ohio, Indiana, Tennessee and Kentucky, while the surge in Florida along with Texas, Arizona and California this month has strained many hospitals.
The increase in cases has forced a U-turn on steps to reopen economies after the end of lockdowns put in place in March and April to slow the spread of the virus.
Florida has had 191 coronavirus deaths in the last 24 hours, the highest single-day rise since the start of the epidemic, the state health department said.
Texas, the second-most populous state, added more than 6,000 new cases on Monday, pushing its total to 401,477, according to a tally being kept by the Reuters news agency. Only three other states – California, Florida and New York – have more than 400,000 total cases.
The widening outbreak has pushed the US death toll from Covid-19 closer to the bleak 150,000 milestone, which the country is expected to cross this week and comes just over three months before the 3 November election, where Donald Trump seeks a second term. The US has more than 4.3m confirmed cases, according to totals tracked by Reuters and Johns Hopkins University.
The surge in cases in Florida prompted Trump last week to cancel the Republican convention events in Jacksonville in late August, which had already been rearranged from North Carolina.
There is, however, a glimmer of hope in the data from Texas, where the state health department reported that current hospitalizations due to Covid-19 fell on Monday.
Anthony Fauci, a top infectious diseases expert and the leading public health figure on the White House coronavirus task force, said there were signs the recent surge could be peaking in hard-hit states like Florida and Texas. But he warned that other parts of the country may be on the cusp of growing outbreaks.
“They may be cresting and coming back down,” Fauci told ABC’s Good Morning America regarding the state of the outbreak in several southern states.
But Fauci said there was a “very early indication” that the percentage of coronavirus tests that were positive was starting to rise in other states, such as Ohio, Indiana, Tennessee and Kentucky.
Fauci added on the same TV show that he was not in “any circumstances” misleading the American public, after
another attack on him by the US president.
In New York, the state governor, Andrew Cuomo, added Illinois, Kentucky, Minnesota, the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico to a list of places whose travelers must quarantine for 14 days when visiting New York. Thirtyone other states are on the list, which was unveiled last month.
New York was one of the early centers of the US outbreak, which first surfaced in China late last year and has now killed more than 654,000 people worldwide.
The rise in US deaths and infections has dampened early hopes that the country was past the worst of an economic crisis that has decimated businesses and put millions of Americans out of work.
Congress on Tuesday was locked in difficult talks over another coronavirus aid package to help American families and businesses recover from the crisis.
Amid infighting in the Republican camp as well as disagreement between the two parties, the House speaker, Nancy Pelosi, said she intended to meet with the Senate majority leader, Mitch McConnell, on Wednesday while both sides are “airing our differences”.
Congress earlier in the pandemic passed about $3tn in aid including enhanced unemployment benefits to blunt the pain of lockdowns and closed businesses.
Senate Republicans announced on Monday a $1tn coronavirus aid package hammered out with the White House, which McConnell touted as a “tailored and targeted” plan to reopen schools and businesses, while protecting companies from lawsuits.
But the proposal sparked immediate opposition from both Democrats and some Republicans. Democrats decried it as inadequate compared with their $3tn proposal that passed the
House in May.
New York City’s mayor, Bill de Blasio, a Democrat, described the Republican proposal as a “non-starter”, telling reporters that it provided zero support for state and local governments hardest hit by the epidemic.
The Republican proposal would slash the current expanded unemployment benefit from $600 a week, in addition to state unemployment, to $200 a week.
Meanwhile, the American Federation of Teachers has authorized what the union is calling “safety strikes” if necessary to protect teachers from coronavirus as the authorities debate whether to return children and college students to in-person learning at the end of the summer break.
Some school districts in coronavirus hot spots and the federal government are pushing to reopen schools, despite concerns about the spread of the virus in classrooms.
And Twitter temporarily restricted the account of the president’s son, Donald Trump Jr, for spreading false claims about coronavirus. He shared a video of a doctor falsely claiming that the anti-malaria drug hydroxychloroquine is a “cure” for coronavirus. Fauci on Tuesday morning emphasized that it is not effective for the disease.