COVID-19 cases are overrunning hospital capacity, in particular in California, Florida, Texas, Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, South Carolina and North Carolina. California is at an all-time high, bordering on 6,000 cases. In Florida, 56 ICU units have no beds left and 35 more are at 90-99% capacity. Major labs are getting increasingly backed up, doubling their turnaround time on tests. The bottleneck frustrates any attempts to carry out contact tracing. Federal testing sites have been set up on the ground in Florida, Louisiana and Texas to increase capacity there.
On July 7, Arizona recorded more deaths than ever before. Overall, 131,200 have died in the United States, more than twice the deaths the U.S. suffered in Vietnam. The projected number of deaths (made by “an influential model often cited by the White House”) changed upwards, now showing an estimated 208,000 by November. And another study, from the model of the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation, projects a saving of up to 45,000 lives if face covering use in public could get to 95%. Otherwise, the Johns Hopkins University count credits the U.S. with over 60,000 new cases on July 7, smashing the July 1 record of 54,000.
