US sets grim record of more than 60k COVID-19 cases in a single day

The United States has set a grim record of more than 60,000 new coronavirus cases in a single day – as the total number of positive infections across the country neared 3 million.

Just over 60,000 new cases were reported in 24 hours on Tuesday, up from the previous record of 53,600 infections set last Thursday. 

The number of cases across the US now nears 3 million and more than 131,000 Americans have died from COVID-19 since the pandemic took hold in March.

National deaths from COVID-19 increased by just over 1,100 on Tuesday, which is the highest daily increase this month. Despite the daily spike, deaths across the country have on average been trending downwards. 

Health officials, however, warn that death rates in some hot spots states including Texas, Arizona and Florida are now showing signs of an increase. 

Deaths are a lagging indicator because it takes time for people to get sick and die, according to health experts. The current national death rates likely represent cases that were diagnosed about a month ago.    

Ashish Jha, the director of the Harvard Global Health Institute, has warned that death rates in some hot spot states like Texas, Florida and Arizona are now starting to increase.   

‘The good news, our death rates have continued to fall and now they’ve stabilized,’ he told GMA on Wednesday. 

‘What we’re missing in all of this is that we have a tale of two countries. We have places like New York where death rates continue to plummet. In all the hotspot states – Texas, Florida, Arizona – death rates are starting to climb, exactly how we worried about.  

‘First people got sick, then hospitals started getting full, now death rates in those states are starting to climb pretty substantially. Over time, the national death rates will start to climb. Really, we need to look at individual states and I’m really worried about those hotspots.’ 

The grim milestone of almost 3 million confirmed cases came as more states reported record numbers of new infections.

California, Hawaii, Idaho, Missouri, Montana, Oklahoma and Texas on Tuesday shattered their previous daily record highs for new cases. 

The biggest jumps occurred in Texas and California, the two largest US states, with more than 10,000 each. 

Health officials have reported alarming upswings of daily caseloads in roughly two dozen states over the past two weeks. 

About 24 states have also reported disturbingly high infection rates as a percentage of diagnostic tests conducted over the past week. 

Texas recorded 10,028 new cases and California hit 10,201 new infections in a single day on Tuesday, crossing a sobering milestone rarely seen since the pandemic first hit the country.

New York and Florida are the only other states to record more than 10,000 new cases in a single day. 

New York hit that grim total back in April when New York City hospitals were overwhelmed and hundreds of people were dying every day. Florida topped 10,000 confirmed cases last week. 

Texas surged past 8,000 statewide hospitalizations for the first time over the long holiday weekend – a more than quadruple increase on the past month. 

On Tuesday, the number of hospitalizations soared past 9,000 and Texas also set a new high for deaths in a single day with 60. 

Mayors in some of the biggest cities in the state and US – including Austin, San Antonio and Houston – have warned that hospitals could soon become overwhelmed with coronavirus patients. 

Deaths remain lower in Texas compared to other big states. As of Tuesday, Texas has confirmed that at least 2,715 people have died due to COVID-19.  

A widely cited mortality model from the University of Washington’s Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation projected on Tuesday that US deaths would reach 208,000 by November 1 with the outbreak expected to gain new momentum heading into the fall.

A hoped-for summertime decline in transmission of the virus never materialized, according to IHME researchers.

‘The US didn’t experience a true end of the first wave of the pandemic,’ the IHME’s director, Dr Christopher Murray, said. 

‘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.’ 

In Arizona, another hot spot, the rate of coronavirus tests coming back positive rose to 26 percent for the week ended July 5, leading two dozen states with positivity rates exceeding 5 percent. The World Heath Organization considers a rate over 5 percent to be troubling. 

The surge has forced 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 of Americans out of work.

In Florida, more than four dozen hospitals across 25 of 67 counties reported their intensive care units had reached full capacity, according to the state’s Agency for Health Care Administration. 

Only 17 percent of the total 6,010 adult ICU beds statewide were available on Tuesday, down from 20 percent three days earlier.  

President Donald Trump, who has pushed for restarting the US economy and urged Americans to return to their normal routines, said on Tuesday he would lean on state governors to open schools in the fall.

Speaking at the White House, Trump 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.’

He also said he disagrees with Dr Anthony Fauci’s assessment of the dire situation the country faces as the virus continues to spread.  

‘The current state is really not good,’ the infectious disease expert said on Monday. ‘We are still knee-deep in the first wave of COVID-19 infections.’

Trump disagreed, saying: ‘I think we are in a good place. I disagree with him.’ 

‘Dr Fauci said don’t wear masks, now he says wear them,’ he continued, adding that the immunologist has ‘said numerous things’ that, according to Trump, was bad advice.