HOUSTON • The coronavirus outbreak in the United States has crossed a grim milestone of over three million confirmed cases, as more states reported record numbers of new infections.
The authorities have reported alarming upswings of daily caseloads in about two dozen states over the past two weeks, a sign that efforts to control the transmission of the virus have failed in large swathes of the country.
California, Hawaii, Idaho, Missouri, Montana, Oklahoma and Texas on Tuesday shattered their previous daily record highs for new cases.
The biggest jumps were in Texas and California, the two largest states, with more than 10,000 cases each.
According to Johns Hopkins University, the US reported a record of more than 60,000 daily confirmed cases on Tuesday. The previous record was 55,220 on July 2.
About 24 states have recorded disturbingly high infection rates as a percentage of diagnostic tests conducted in the past week.
In Texas alone, the number of hospitalised patients more than doubled in just two weeks.
The trend has driven many more Americans to seek out Covid-19 screenings. The Department of Health and Human Services said on Tuesday that it was adding short-term "surge" testing sites in three metropolitan areas in Florida, Louisiana and Texas.
In Houston, a line of more than 200 cars snaked around the United Memorial Medical Centre as people waited for hours in sweltering heat to get tested. Some arrived the night before to secure a place in line at the drive-through site.
"I got tested because my younger brother got positive," said Mr Fred Robles, 32, who spent the night in his car.
Mr Dean Davis, 32, who lost his job because of the pandemic, said he arrived at the testing site at 3am on Tuesday after he waited for hours on Monday but failed to make the cut-off. "I was like, let me get here at 3am, maybe nobody will be here," he said. "(When) I got here, there was a line already."
In Florida, more than four dozen hospitals across 25 of 67 counties reported that their intensive care units (ICUs) had reached full capacity, according to the state's Agency for Health Care Administration. Only 17 per cent of the total 6,010 adult ICU beds statewide were available on Tuesday, down from 20 per cent three days earlier.
Additional hospitalisations could strain healthcare systems in many areas, leading to an uptick in lives lost from the respiratory illness that has killed some 134,000 people in the country so far.
At least 923 of those deaths were reported on Tuesday, the biggest single-day toll since June 10 but still far fewer than the record 2,806 tallied in April.
A widely cited mortality model from the University of Washington's Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME) projected on Tuesday that US deaths would reach 208,000 by Nov 1, with the outbreak expected to gain new momentum heading into the autumn.
A hoped-for summertime decline in transmission of the virus never materialised, the IHME said.
"The US didn't experience a true end of the first wave of the pandemic," director Christopher Murray said in a statement. "This will not spare us from a second surge in the fall, which will hit particularly hard in states currently seeing high levels of infections."
President Donald Trump, who has pushed for restarting the economy and urged Americans to return to their normal routines, said on Tuesday that he would lean on state governors to open schools in the autumn.
He said some people wanted to keep schools closed for political reasons. "No way, so we're very much going to put pressure on governors and everybody else to open the schools."
New infections are rising in 42 states, based on a Reuters analysis of the past two weeks. By Tuesday afternoon, the number of confirmed cases had surpassed three million, affecting nearly one of every 100 Americans and a population roughly equal to Nevada's.
In Arizona, another hot spot, the rate of tests coming back positive rose to 26 per cent for the week ended July 5, leading two dozen states with positivity rates exceeding 5 per cent.
The World Heath Organisation considers a rate of over 5 per cent to be troubling.
The surge has forced the authorities to backpedal on moves to reopen businesses, such as restaurants and bars, after mandatory lockdowns in March and April reduced economic activity to a virtual standstill and put millions out of work.
REUTERS
