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New York, the largest city in the United States, forces its bars and restaurants to close at 10:00 p.m. from this Friday to face the second wave of COVID-19, which is hitting the country with unusual force and continues to wreak havoc also in Europe.
The number of coronavirus patients hospitalized in the United States is the highest since the start of the pandemic, with more than 65,000 people, according to the Covid Tracking Project. The virus has already caused 242,621 deaths in the country, according to a count by Johns Hopkins University.
In the absence of national slogans from the federal government of Donald Trump, local authorities begin to impose restrictions on their territories.
In New York State, Governor Andrew Cuomo announced that all establishments authorized to sell alcohol, including bars and restaurants, will have to close at 10 p.m.
Some states and cities also started also and incite their inhabitants to stay at home.
This is the case of Chicago – the third most populous city in the United States – which asked its 2.7 million inhabitants to stay in their homes, except to go to work, school or some essential activities, a recommended but not coercive measure.
“Each of us must step up and ‘Protect Chicago’ right now, or 2020 could go from bad to worse,” says a note on the city’s website.
There are currently 15,000 more hospital beds in the United States occupied by coronavirus patients than in the presidential election on November 3.
Mortality is particularly high in the Midwest.
In North Dakota, the governor authorized nurses and doctors who tested positive but have no symptoms to continue working in units dedicated to the virus.
More than 10,000 affected by the new coronavirus died in the last 24 hours in the world, according to a count of the AFP from Thursday. About half (4,961) of these deaths (10,010) were registered in Europe, 1,868 in Latin America and the Caribbean, and 1,330 in the United States.
Hope for vaccine
There was encouraging news earlier in the week about the development of a vaccine from Pfizer and BioNTech laboratories, but that potential solution will not arrive in time to prevent tens of thousands more deaths.
The first vaccines are expected to be available perhaps by the end of the year in the United States, and in Europe they would do so in the first quarter of 2021, he told the AFP Andrea Ammon, director of the European Center for Disease Control (ECDC). (I)
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