Oregon Joins Florida, Texas in Confronting Covid-19’s Resurgence
Oregon Joins Florida, Texas in Confronting Covid-19’s Resurgence
(Bloomberg) -- Oregon is joining states including Florida and Texas in battling a resurgence of Covid-19, adding to pressure on governors to roll back reopenings of their economies.
Cases hit an all-time high in Oregon on Tuesday, with the state reporting 278 new confirmed and presumptive cases, raising the total to 6,098. In Florida, the positivity rate -- a key measure of whether cases are mounting independent of expanded testing -- surged to its highest level since at least April. And in Texas, hospitalizations had their biggest 24-hour increase since June 4.
At an urgent care center in Houston’s Montrose neighborhood, about two dozen people stood in line Wednesday for tests. Those who snagged an appointment said they had gotten there around 5 a.m. A man who worked at the facility came outside to tell others gathering that there weren’t any time slots left. He recommended trying again early Thursday morning.
The U.S., which lacks a unified national response to the pandemic, has largely failed to flatten the curve of infections as nations including South Korea and New Zealand have. In many other countries, leaders are focused on stamping out localized outbreaks: Beijing, for example, closed schools to fight a returning threat. But in America, governors have to decide whether to ask citizens to return to widespread lockdowns that could wallop their just-opened economies all over again.
“When people started moving around and didn’t see any Covid-19 among their friends, people started letting down their guard,” said Ali Mokdad, professor of health metrics sciences at the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation at the University of Washington.
He said the U.S. may have avoided an earlier spike when economies first opened because the public was initially very cautious, though that is changing. Mokdad said he already expected a seasonal increase in Covid-19 in September, but now that could be worse because it will be starting from a higher base of infections.
“You’re going to see more infections and more mortality,” Mokdad said.
In Oregon, the biggest portion of the new cases -- 119 of them -- came from Union County, where the state is grappling with an outbreak connected with a church. Local media reported that a video recently removed from Facebook showed a crowd of its parishioners dancing and celebrating together in late May, when large gatherings were prohibited. But case numbers were rising even before that outbreak.
Last week, Governor Kate Brown put any further reopening on pause for seven days; she is expected to announce what’s next for the state Wednesday. Workplace outbreaks and the resumption of economic activity that began in mid-May are the biggest factors behind the increasing numbers, said Robb Cowie, communications director at the Oregon Health Authority.
“We were aware of the balance that we had to strike between continuing to try to suppress the virus and at the same time recognizing that people needed to resume some of their primary functions of daily life,” Cowie said. “Moving forward with the resumption of more normal activity meant more exposure and more risk.”
The state is adding tracers, who contact people who may have interacted with the infected, as well as setting up contracts with community organizations to track the disease’s spread, supporting people in quarantine and providing translation services, Cowie said.
Adding Inmates
Texas reported an 11% surge in virus hospitalizations in one day, according to the state health department. The 275 new patients swelled the total to a record 2,793 and left just 1,473 intensive-care beds available. Since the end of May, Covid-19 hospitalizations have climbed 66%, state data showed.
The state is struggling to track the surge as hospitalizations accelerate and the reserve of intensive-case beds shrinks in the biggest cities. On Tuesday, Governor Greg Abbott blamed a late data dump from prisons for a June 10 surge that set a record. But just hours later, health officials added a further 1,400 prison cases.
The mayors of Houston, San Antonio, Austin, Dallas, Fort Worth and other cities have asked the governor to allow them institute requirements for face masks, but Abbott has yet to agree.
No Stopping
In Florida, the new rate of people testing positive for the first time surged to 10.3% for Tuesday, from 7.4% on Monday, the highest daily level since at least mid-April. Florida reported 82,719 Covid-19 cases on Wednesday, up 3.3% from a day earlier, compared with an average increase of 2.8% in the previous seven days.
Speaking Tuesday in Tallahassee, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis said he had no plans to reverse the reopening of his state because of the recent uptick in Covid-19 numbers, noting that ample hospital space is available. He said the rising case numbers reflect more testing and isolated outbreaks, including at farms, prisons and at least one factory.
“We’re not shutting down,” he said. “We’re going to go forward.”
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