Coronavirus Cases Continue to Climb in a Majority of States

By David E. Hubler
Contributor, In Homeland Security

President Trump’s visit to Arizona on Tuesday for an election rally coincided with 3,591 reported new cases of COVID-19, “another record high number in the state’s daily report,” according to the Arizona Republic. Daily hospitalizations exceeded 2,000 for the first time.

Another 42 deaths also were reported Tuesday, according to the Arizona Department of Health Services. Arizona ranks fourth among the states that are experiencing an increase in coronavirus cases.

A Return to True Normalcy ‘Remains a Distant Vision’

“As states move to partly reopen their economies, thousands of new cases are still being identified each day and true normalcy remains a distant vision,” The New York Times said.

Twenty-seven states have reported an increase in coronavirus cases in the past two weeks. They include Florida, Georgia, Arizona and North Carolina; another 12 states have reported a decline in cases, including Virginia, Indiana, Rhode Island and the District of Columbia. Thirteen states, including Massachusetts, Pennsylvania and Michigan, reported the number of cases were mostly the same.

Some significant recent developments in the battle to contain the spread of COVID-19, the respiratory illness caused by the coronavirus, as reported by The Washington Post include:

• Florida has changed how it records intensive care unit occupancy by coronavirus patients in a move that will improve its hospitalization rates ahead of plans to further open the state in July.
• Texas Children’s Hospital began admitting adult patients, as hospitalizations have soared in Harris County in and around Houston. Meanwhile, Governor Greg Abbott (R) urged Texans to stay inside to avoid spreading the virus. “The safest place for you is at your home,” he said Tuesday.
• Officials in Phoenix declined to enforce local requirements to wear masks in public spaces at Trump’s rally, where a crowd of supporters largely bucked the mandate and ignored social distancing guidelines.
• Virginia has proposed its own set of coronavirus-era safety rules that companies must implement to protect workers from infection — a first in the country and a potential way forward for other states in the face of federal inaction.

Houston Methodist Hospital CEO Marc Boom told The Post that hospitalizations have tripled since Memorial Day, May 25.

He said that “somewhere around Memorial Day, people just sighed a breath of relief and said, ‘Hey, it’s summer, I’m going to act like it’s summer, I’m going to act like this thing never was here,’” Boom said. “And I think we’re really paying the price for that now.”

Hospitals Are Seeing Younger Coronavirus Patients Who Tend to Have Better Outcomes

The good news, Boom added, is that Houston Methodist Hospital “is seeing younger coronavirus patients, who tend to have better outcomes — shorter and less serious stints in the hospital, and fewer deaths.”

Regrettably, the United States leads the world in two coronavirus categories: Number of cases 2.35 million and number of deaths 121,178, according to The New York Times.

The numbers are more than double those of Brazil (1.145 million and 52,645) and Russia (606,043 and 8503), numbers two and three behind the U.S.