Governors backtrack on reopenings as coronavirus cases escalate.
US officials estimate that 20 million affected
NEW YORK – The coronavirus crisis deepened in Arizona on Thursday, and the governor of Texas began to backtrack after making one of the most aggressive pushes in the nation to reopen, as the daily number of confirmed cases across the U.S. closed in on the peak reached during the dark days of late April. While greatly expanded testing probably accounts for some of the increase, experts say other measures indicate the virus is making a comeback. Daily deaths, hospitalizations and the percentage of tests coming back positive have also have been rising over the past few weeks in parts of the country, mostly in the South and West. In Arizona, 23% of tests conducted over the past week have been positive, nearly triple the national average, and a record 415 patients were on ventilators. Mississippi saw its daily count of new cases reach new highs twice this week. “It’s not a joke. Really bad things are going to happen,” Mississippi Health Officer Dr. Thomas Dobbs said. Federal officials estimated Thursday that 20 million Americans have been infected with the coronavirus, meaning that the vast majority of the population remains susceptible. That estimate is roughly 10 times the number of confirmed cases. Officials have long known that millions of people were infected without knowing it and that many cases are being missed be“the cause of gaps in testing. Twenty million infections means that about 6% of the nation’s 33 1 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 Thursday. “Our best estimate right now is that for every case that was reported, there actually are 10 more infections.” Republican Gov. Greg Abbott of Texas, whose state was among the first to reopen, put any further lifting of restrictions on hold 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. Nevada’s governor ordered the wearing of face masks in public, Las Vegas casinos included. last thing we want to do as a state is go backwards and close down businesses,” Abbott said. The daily average of COVID-19 cases has climbed by more than 50% over the past two weeks, an Associated Press analysis found. Whether the rise in cases translates into an equally dire surge in deaths across the U.S. overall will depend on a number of factors, experts said, most crucially whether government officials make the right decisions. “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. But he warned: “We have consistently underestimated this virus.”