Hospitals struggle as virus surges again across US
More people in hospital than at any time during pandemic
As the coronavirus races across the United States, it has reached every corner of a nursing home in Kansas, infecting all 62 residents inside. There are so few hospital beds available in North Dakota that patients sick with the virus are being ferried by ambulance to facilities 100 miles away. And in Ohio, more people are hospitalised with the virus than at any other time during the pandemic.
Thirdwave
After weeks of warnings that cases were again on the rise, a third surge of coronavirus infection has firmly taken hold in the United States. The nation is averaging 59,000 new cases a day, the most since the beginning of August, and the country is on pace to record the most new daily cases of the entire pandemic in the coming days.
But if earlier surges were defined by acute and concentrated outbreaks — in the Northeast this spring, and in the South during the summer — the virus is now simmering at a worrisome level across nearly the entire country. Colorado, Illinois, Kentucky, Michigan, Montana, New Mexico, North Dakota, Ohio, South Dakota, Utah, Wisconsin and Wyoming each set seven- day case records on Tuesday. Even New Jersey, once a model for bringing the virus under control, has seen cases double over the past month.
On Monday, the mayor of Fargo, North Dakota, used his emergency powers to issue a mandatory mask order, the first of its kind in the state. Hours later, the City Council of Minot, the fourth- largest city in the state, issued a similar order.
“We were hoping we had escaped the Covid- 19,” Mayor Tim Mahoney of Fargo, a practicing surgeon, said. “Now we’re just like everybody else in the country. It has hit us with a vengeance.”