Record Virus Numbers Thrust States Into Life-or-Death Choice

(Bloomberg) -- As Covid-19 cases soar to new highs, U.S. governors are again in the crucible, facing wrenching choices about how to balance economic recovery and the health of citizens.

Their divergent approaches are inflaming tensions within states as well as with neighbors. While some have paused to reassess the wisdom of allowing movement and commerce, many are plunging ahead despite daunting numbers like Florida’s 2.8% increase in reported cases Friday, its largest daily jump since May 1.

The surge also has produced record numbers of new cases in Arizona, Oklahoma, Arkansas, Alabama and North Carolina. “The disease is spreading,” Governor Roy Cooper said Friday afternoon.

The outbreaks -- and the dilemmas for governors -- come about a month and a half after U.S. states began emerging from emergency lockdowns, and as the country surpasses 2 million confirmed infections and 114,000 deaths. The pressure reflects the Trump administration’s approach to the pandemic, providing largely voluntary guidance and leaving states to set strategies. That has produced a patchwork of policies and cleared the way to reopening of high-risk places like casinos and bars.

“I’m worried that people have accepted where we are as a new normal. And it’s not normal,” said Tom Inglesby, director of the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security. “We can do better than this.”

“Are we resigned to losing 1,000 Americans a day until we have a vaccine?” Inglesby said. “I hope we aren’t.”

Patchwork Procedures

But President Donald Trump himself has said he plans to continue holding in-person campaign events, which typically draw thousands of supporters, despite the risk of virus transmission. The president has one scheduled for June 19 in Tulsa, Oklahoma. On its online registration form, the Trump campaign asks prospective attendees to acknowledge the risk of virus exposure and agree not to hold the campaign liable.

It’s not a theoretical concern: Oklahoma on Friday reported a nearly 3% increase in new cases, a one-day record. About a third of the cases came from Tulsa County.

At the first U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention briefing in months, officials Friday said little about why cases are increasing in some places, instead repeating familiar advice about wearing masks and washing hands. Jay Butler, CDC’s Covid-19 response incident manager, said any lockdown decisions would be local.

That may result in strain between state and local authorities, as in Houston, where officials are considering reimposing stay-at-home orders amid warnings of a worsening outbreak. That would put the city at odds with Governor Greg Abbott’s orders to reopen the state.

Maintaining a united front has been difficult even in states that have had success battling the disease. In New Jersey, which has quelled a raging outbreak, patience gave way. On Friday, the state won an injunction to block the shore resort town of Asbury Park from opening restaurant doors June 15, with density restrictions, despite a statewide ban that remains in effect.

“The council here is inundated with business owners on the brink of collapse,” Deputy Mayor Amy Quinn said.

New York Governor Andrew Cuomo said Friday that stringent rules tamed the virus, particularly in New York City, which was the epicenter of disease in the U.S. Cuomo noted that in other states, “the infection is going up dramatically.”

“You have states now that are scaling back their reopening. That’s how bad the spikes are,” Cuomo said.

Oregon Pause

In several states with rising infection counts, governors have explained them away by increases in testing, which simply identifies more cases.

Not so in Oregon, where Governor Kate Brown, a Democrat, said Thursday that new cases -- which that day reached 178, Oregon’s highest daily count since the start of the pandemic -- were cause for concern.

Counties there must apply for permission to reopen, but Brown announced that process would be put on hold for a week. She said that the pause would give “public health experts time to assess what factors are driving the spread of the virus and determine if we need to adjust our approach.”

Cases in Florida have climbed by 9,483 in the past seven days, the biggest-ever weekly increase, but Governor Ron DeSantis -- a Republican and staunch Trump ally -- has given no indication he will roll back the reopening five weeks after it began.

On Thursday, Florida forged ahead. DeSantis appeared maskless at an event to celebrate bringing the Amateur Athletic Union Junior Olympic Games to Brevard County this summer. His administration unveiled recommendations for how to reopen schools in August. And, climactically, Trump said he will accept the Republican nomination that month in Jacksonville.

In Florida, smaller cities and towns that were initially spared have seen some of the biggest percentage jumps in the past week, fitting a similar pattern across states.

DeSantis has repeatedly attributed Florida’s uptick to expanded testing. Lately, as the positivity rate rose, he’s begun to acknowledge outbreaks but on Thursday stressed that they were mostly limited to long-term care facilities, prisons and farmworkers.

“General public: You do see cases, but if you do 2,000 tests one day, 4,000 tests the next, you’re going to get more positives when you do the 4,000,” ” he said from Melbourne.

Watching the Borders

In Arizona, the hospital system Banner Health this week tweeted that the increase in coronavirus is worrisome, “and also correlates with a rise in cases that we are seeing in our hospital ICUs.” The number of Covid-19 patients on ventilators had quadrupled since mid-May, it said.

Governor Doug Ducey, a Republican, said Thursday that the state has hospital capacity and claimed “misinformation” had been spread. He said no new lockdown was under consideration.

Will Humble, executive director of the Arizona Public Health Association and a former director of the Arizona Department of Health Services, said that when the state reopened, it implemented little in the way of public-health requirements, and as a result some businesses like bars have come to look like they did pre-pandemic.

“This all happened after a really successful stay-at-home order,” he said. “Everyone’s sacrificed, everyone got canned, all these people are unemployed, and then when we came out of it, it’s like, ‘Party on, bro.’”

Arizona’s caseload as well as that of Utah concern Jared Polis, Democratic governor of neighboring Colorado. He said at a news conference in Denver on Thursday that the virus’s resurgence in those places threatens rural western Colorado, which has seen few infections.

“A virus doesn’t understand state borders,” he said. “We watch that, and we worry.”

©2020 Bloomberg L.P.