The governor of Texas, Republican Greg Abbott, decreed the suspension of the economic recovery in this state, on Thursday, after a record of infections was registered and the hospitalizations of patients with Covid-19 increased.
“The last thing I want to do is step back and close the stores. This temporary pause will help our state to contain the spread until we can safely enter the next phase of economic reopening“said Abbott in a statement.
Texas, the second largest American state in terms of population, was one of the most affected and with one of the worst outbreaks in the country, accounting for more than 5,000 new cases in just three days. Besides that, the number of hospitalizations for infection by SARS-Cov-2 broke records and hospital institutions were on the verge of hospitalization capacity limits.
The Texan governor admits that the The State is again facing “a massive outbreak” of Covid-19, having already identified the main points of contagion in the metropolitan areas of Houston and Dallas, as well as in cities with Austin, San Antonio and El Paso – cities where surgeries were suspended non-urgent to ensure hospital beds for patients with Covid-19.
“While we are suffering from this boom, both in hospitalizations and infections, we will focus on strategies that can slow the spread of the virus. Meanwhile, we allow Texans to continue to receive salaries to support families“he added.
As of Thursday, Texas had 4389 inpatients with Covid-19, almost double since last week.
–
“We reopened too soon“, I told Bloomberg Peter Hotez, dean of the National School of Tropical Medicine at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston. “Masks alone will not be enough“.
–
The exponential increase in cases has been observed in recent weeks in several states in the country that, like Texas, imposed restrictions in a timely manner and were, at the beginning of the epidemic in the USA, the least affected.
Florida, Arizona and California fear further outbreaks
Unprecedented increases in the number of infected people this week have also been seen in Alabama, Arizona, California, Florida, Idaho, Mississippi, Missouri, Nevada, Oklahoma, South Carolina and Wyoming.
Although part of this increase in the number of cases can be attributed to more tests, the percentage of positive results is also increasing.
–
In the midst of a lack of definition, easing restrictions and reopening economic activities, Florida, California, Arizona and Texas registered almost half of all new cases in the USA, which leads to greater fears and consequent caution.
Only on Thursday the State of Florida saw an increase of more than five thousand new cases of infection. Ron DeSantis, the governor of the state of Florida, acknowledged however that there has been a significant increase in contagion in the past few days and that this can be explained by increased testing and social events for the youngest.
In Arizona, 23 percent of the tests performed in the last seven days were positive, which is almost three times the national average. Also in this State, a record was recorded this week of patients with Covid-19 in intensive care and in need of ventilation, which also led the Arizona authorities to suspend surgeries and non-urgent treatments from hospital centers, to provide priority to new cases of infection by the new coronavirus.
In a statement, Doug Ducey, governor of Arizona, lamented the fact that the numbers continue to “go in the wrong direction” and who, in this sense, fear that “the numbers will be worse next week and next week”. The governor fears that hospitals will reach capacity “very soon” if the number of cases and hospitalizations continues to worsen.
“This is Arizona’s first wave, and it won’t be our last wave“, said Ducey.
As outbreaks begin to emerge in the various corners of the United States and the numbers reach record levels, several states are beginning to rethink measures of deflation and how to control contagion. North Carolina has already announced that it will halt plans to ease restrictions, as will the states of Louisiana and Kansas.
In addition to some states being imposing some restrictions or suspending the lack of definition, some companies are also backing down and postponing the reopening, like Disney, for example, which was going to reopen next week.
Government experts said this week, too, that more than 20 million Americans may have contracted the coronavirus, which is 10 times the official count, indicating that many people without symptoms have or have had the disease and continue transmitting it.
– .
