HOUSTON, Texas — Top officials in Houston are calling for the city to lock back down as area hospitals strain to accommodate the onslaught of patients sick with the new coronavirus.
By The Associated Press
HOUSTON, Texas — Top officials in Houston are calling for the city to lock back down as area hospitals strain to accommodate the onslaught of patients sick with the new coronavirus.
Houston Mayor Sylvester Turner and Harris County Judge Lina Hidalgo, both Democrats, said this weekend that a stay-at-home order is needed for America’s fourth-largest city to cope with the surge of COVID-19 cases.
The call comes after a week in which Texas continued to break records for confirmed COVID-19 cases and deaths linked to the disease. State health officials reported 8,196 new cases Sunday, another 80 deaths and a total of 10,410 people hospitalized due to the virus.
The decision over a lockdown, however, rests with Republican Gov. Greg Abbott — who has resisted this step, saying it should be a last resort.
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HERE’S WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW ABOUT THE VIRUS OUTBREAK:
Coronavirus deaths take a long-expected turn for the worse
— As U. S. grapples with virus, Florida hits record case increase
— Dengue prevention efforts stifled by coronavirus pandemic
— Coronavirus surge in eastern Europe prompts new restrictions
— Doctors say virus spread, not politics, should guide school reopenings.
— Churches amid the pandemic: Some outbreaks, many challenges
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Follow all of AP’s pandemic coverage at http://apnews.com/VirusOutbreak and https://apnews.com/UnderstandingtheOutbreak
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HERE’S WHAT ELSE IS HAPPENING:
JACKSON, Miss. — Students in Mississippi are scheduled to return to school in August amid rising cases of COVID-19 in the state, but campus life will be a lot different than what many are used to.
At Mississippi State, temperature check-in kiosks will be scattered around campus. Students who live in dorms will be required to log their temperature every 24 hours and fill out a health questionnaire. Employees and day students will be required to check temperatures at home and take a screening survey before arriving on campus.
At Mississippi State and the University of Mississippi, all members of the community will be required to wear masks inside and out of the classroom, where class sizes will be reduced by 50%.
“While we remain focused on preserving the on-campus experience, COVID-19 has forced us to rethink everything we do,” University of Mississippi Chancellor Glenn F. Boyce said in a letter to the campus community in late June.
New cases of the disease caused by the new coronavirus and numbers of hospitalizations are still rising in Mississippi. On Friday, the state reported 1,031 new cases — one of its single highest increases.
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DICKINSON, N. D. — Metal band Great White has apologized for performing at an outdoor North Dakota concert where the crowd didn’t wear masks despite the ongoing threat of the coronavirus.
The band drew criticism on social media after the performance Thursday night as part of the “First on First: Dickinson Summer Nights” concert series in Dickinson, in the southwest of the state. Spin magazine posted video showing the crowd packed in and not wearing face masks.
“We have had the luxury of hindsight and we would like to apologize to those who disagreed with our decision to fulfill our contractual agreement. The Promoter and staff were nothing but professional and assured us of the safety precautions,” Great White said in a statement Saturday.
Although North Dakota health officials recommend social distancing and wearing masks when possible, there is no legal requirement to do so in the state and Great White said the band nevertheless was “not in a position to enforce the laws.”
The band is best known for its version of “Once Bitten, Twice Shy.” A different iteration of Great White that included longtime frontman Jack Russell and that performed under the name Jack Russell’s Great White was involved in one of the most tragic concerts in U. S. history in 2003. During a show at The Station nightclub in Rhode Island, the band’s pyrotechnics sparked a fast-moving blaze that caused a bottleneck as fans tried to flee. The fire killed 100 people.
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BARCELONA, Spain — Regional authorities in northeast Spain have tightened a health lockdown and confined over 140,000 people to only leaving their homes for work and other essential activities.
Catalan authorities announced the confinement on Sunday, a week after they had already limited travel to and from the county of El Segria, population 210,000, because of an outbreak of the virus that causes COVID-19.
Lleida, with 138,000 residents, is one of the municipalities in which people are confined to their homes.
“We must break the chain of contagion,” said regional health authority Alba Vergés. “We must limit our contact to those people we live with.”
The outbreak in the rural area is connected to farm work and seasonal day laborers, many of whom work and live in precarious conditions.
Catalan health authorities are also keeping close watch on an outbreak in Hospitalet, a densely populated municipality in the greater Barcelona metropolitan area. In total, northeast Catalonia reported over 800 new cases on Sunday.
Spain emerged from a three-month nationwide lockdown in mid-June that it needed to rein in the virus that has officially claimed at least 28,000 lives.
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JOHANNESBURG — South African President Cyril Ramaphosa said Sunday the country will return to a ban of the sales of alcohol immediately to reduce the volume of trauma patients so that hospitals have more beds to treat COVID-19 patients.
