India reached a new high for daily COVID-19 cases on July 9, and now is third in the world in total cases with over 820,000. Mexico’s cases are also soaring, along with hospitalizations and deaths. In Australia, the government has moved to return the state of Victoria, including its capital Melbourne, to lockdown, which affects over 6.6 million people. And in the U.S. Friday’s new cases reached a new record high of about 69,000, beating the Thursday, July 9, record of 63,247. The seven-day running average now stands at about 53,700, reaching record highs each of the past two weeks.
U.S. hospitalizations are also continuing to rise rapidly, stretching capabilities in a number of states to the limit. Deaths, always a lagging indicator, have not yet risen as rapidly, but are expected to — with the only silver lining being that youth are a growing percentage of those infected, and they tend to have much lower mortality rates than the general population.
In the state of Mississippi, hospitals are now stretched to the limit. “Mississippi hospitals cannot take care of Mississippi patients,” Thomas Dobbs, Mississippi health officer, said at a press conference on July 9, according to the Mississippi Free Press. He said the state’s five largest hospitals were filling up, and he and other health officials begged the public to wear masks.
California announced it will be releasing 8,000 prison inmates early (usually those with less than a year left to serve on non-violent crimes), because of the COVID crisis. There are now 5,800 cases in the state prison system, with places like San Quentin being a disaster, where one-third of all inmates are infected. California has already reduced its prison population by 10,000 since March.
