The United States has reached a not so pleasant milestone of three million coronavirus cases on the 2nd week of July days after its Independence Day. The surge in coronavirus cases in the US continues with more than 50,000 cases of the virus being reported daily as hospitalizations continue to rise.
The US reported around 60000 new confirmed cases of the virus over the last 24 hours as the outbreaks are expanding across several states. Half of the cases reported in recent days are from the four states of California, Texas, Florida, and Arizona. The US has reported an average of 51000 cases daily over the last week.
Nearly 520,000 tests were conducted over the previous twenty-four hours, and the positivity rate of the US increased from 6.5 percent yesterday to 9.1 percent today. On a week rolling average, the positivity rate is 7.9 percent, which is the highest since May.
The daily cases are increasing alarmingly in the US with authorities reporting that 24 states have reported a jump in their cases over the past two weeks, it’s a signal that efforts to control the spread of the virus have failed in large parts of the country. Hawaii, Missouri, Oklahoma, California, Idaho, Montana, and Texas all break their daily cases record yesterday.
Texas and California, two of the largest states, recorded the biggest jumps with more than 10000 cases each. The number of hospitalized patients is increased by more than 2 times over the last two weeks in Texas. As a result, more people are looking to get tested for Covid19.
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President Donald Trump, just a week ago stated that coronavirus in the US will disappear and tweeted that the US had the lowest death rate in the world. It’s not clear how Trump concluded that because the US has a death rate of 4.44 percent which is certainly not the ‘lowest’ in the world. As of now, 3,120,481 confirmed cases of coronavirus are reported in the US with 134,300 deaths.
Not long after Trump’s tweet, Dr. Anthony Fauci, the United States top disease expert contradicted Trump’s statement by saying it’s a false narrative to comfort yourselves on a lower rate of death.
Trump administration’s coronavirus response coordinator Dr. Deborah L. Birx agreed that the officials are astonished by this recent rise especially among young people aged 18 to 35. According to her, this age group was very disciplined around March and April but when they saw people on social media going out and doing things, they went out and about too.
A significant portion of the new cases is made of people aged 40 or under in the states with recent outbreaks, this may be seen as an indication of how the reopening of bars, offices, and restaurants has contributed to the spread of coronavirus in the US.
Further since the 26th of June, the US has reported half a million new coronavirus cases. Cases have gone up in 37 states over the last two weeks as the country is averaging more than 50,000 cases a day. Trump dismissed the severity of this outbreak over the weekend claiming 99 percent of these cases are harmless which leaves the health experts very concerned.
According to Dr. Fauci the current surge in cases is directly linked with some states reopening too early and young people not wearing masks are propagating this pandemic.