All three states post new records.
Officials in states with surging coronavirus cases issued dire warnings Sunday about the spread of infections, blaming outbreaks in their communities on early reopenings and saying the virus was rapidly outpacing containment efforts.
“We don’t have room to experiment, we don’t have room for incrementalism when we’re seeing these kinds of numbers,” said Judge Lina Hidalgo, a Democrat who is the top elected official in Harris County, Texas, which encompasses the sprawling Houston metro area. “Nor should we wait for all the hospital beds to fill and all these people to die before we take drastic action.”
The rolling seven-day average for daily new cases in the United States reached a record high for the 27th day in a row, climbing to 48,606 on Sunday, according to The Washington Post’s tracking. Coronavirus-related hospitalizations rose to their highest levels to date in Arizona and Nevada.
The country’s seven-day average of new deaths fell to 486, down from 562 a week prior, but health experts cautioned that the count of infections would soon drive the number back up.
New coronavirus cases in Florida on Sunday exceeded 10,000 in a day for the third time in the past week, after the state posted a record high of 11,458 the previous day. The new infections pushed the state’s total caseload past 200,000, a mark passed by two other states, New York and California.
Food and Drug Administration Commissioner Stephen Hahn said it was “too early to tell” whether the Republican National Convention could be held safely in Jacksonville, Fla., next month. “We’ll have to see how this unfolds in Florida and elsewhere around the country,” he told CNN.
Frustration about the pandemic response has mounted among local leaders, who say they have had to grapple with conflicting orders and frequently changing guidelines from governors and the White House as they try to curb sharply rising infections.
After Texas reported another single-day record for new coronavirus cases over the weekend, Austin Mayor Steve Adler, a Democrat, told CNN’s “State of the Union” that there won’t be enough medical personnel to keep up with the spike in cases if the rate of increase continued unabated in his city.
