(CNN) — With rising Covid-19 cases and hospitalizations sending many states backward in their reopening plans, one health expert warns that if the US continues on its current path it will reach “one of the most unstable times in the history of our country.”
“We will have hospitals overwhelmed and not only in terms of ICU beds and hospitals — and that’s bad — but exhausted hospital staff and hospital staff that’s getting ill themselves,” Dr. Peter Hotez, the dean of tropical medicine at Baylor College of Medicine, told CNN Friday night. “So, we won’t have enough manpower, human power, to manage all of this.”
Only five states are seeing a decrease of at least 10% in average new daily cases over the past week. And the US set a record for the highest single day of new cases for the second time this week with 66,627 cases on Friday, according to data from Johns Hopkins University.
The resurgence has many local leaders returning to actions taken in March and April to slow the spread of the virus.
At least 26 states have paused or rolled back their plans to reopen.
Atlanta’s mayor and Georgia’s governor are at odds over the mayor’s order Friday to send her city back to Phase 1 of its reopening plan. Citing an “alarming” increase in cases, Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms said residents under this phase should leave the house only for essential trips, and restaurants and retailers must offer only to-go or curbside pickup service.
Gov. Brian Kemp’s office said the mayor’s plan is not “legally enforceable” because Kemp signed an order prohibiting local action from being more prohibitive than the state’s requirements.
To free the capacity for more testing and hospital care in a surge, Kemp reactivated a makeshift hospital Friday at the Georgia World Congress Center in Atlanta.
In Texas, Gov. Greg Abbott renewed a disaster declaration first issued March 13 to mitigate spread in his state, while Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer requested the extension of National Guard use through December for humanitarian missions such as running mobile screenings, distributing food and medical supplies and disinfecting public spaces.
“All people who study these viruses think that the summer is the quiet time. Think about that. This is the quiet time for coronavirus,” Dr. William Haseltine, a former professor at Harvard Medical School, told CNN on Friday. “If this is the quiet time, I hate to think what winter is going to be like this year.”
A record-setting day to end a record-setting week
The US has set records for coronavirus infections and hospitalizations this summer — and this week has been no different.
Georgia set a record for the number of new cases in one day on Friday with 4,484 new cases, according to the state’s department of health. The state’s previous record was set on June 26.
Also on Friday, the US reported its highest number of new cases in one day for the second time this week. The previous record for the US was set just one day earlier.
The Louisiana Department of Health reported 2,642 new cases Friday, making it the highest day of new cases since the pandemic began.
California, which has held rank as one of the hardest hit states, continued to set records in coronavirus hospitalization and ICU rates this week, with over 6,000 patients being treated.
Hospitals stretched thin
Hospital capacity — a concern in many places when the pandemic first broke out — is being raised as a pressing issue once again.
An ICU nurse at Banner Health in Arizona said the staff and the three coronavirus ICUs at the hospital where she works are already stretched thin.
“Now, we’re kind of at the point where we are stretched so thin, we are at the point of compromising patient safety,” Lauren Leander told CNN on Thursday.
It’s a familiar story. In Riverside County, California, 10 out of 17 hospitals are at or above 100% capacity of licensed ICU beds, county spokesperson Brooke Federico said.
Florida has also reported a rise in hospitalizations.
A total of 6,991 people with Covid-19 are currently hospitalized in Florida, the state’s Agency for Health Care Administration said Friday.
And of the coronavirus cases Friday in Miami-Dade County, Florida, 74% more are hospitalized than were on June 27. There has also been an 88% increase in the number of ICU beds being used and an 123% increase in the use of ventilators since then, according to data released by Miami-Dade County Government.
Florida had ‘no justification not to move forward’
Though the increase in cases and hospitalizations has been cause for concern for some state and local leaders, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis has reiterated his stance that the state can handle the incoming surge.
DeSantis told reporters Friday that no major hospital system in the state “has even gone to, like, a surge level.”
In response to reports that the state has many hospitals reaching or at capacity, DeSantis told reporters, “You’ve got a lot of beds available.”
Dr. Anthony Fauci cited Florida as one of the states that opened too quickly. The state “jumped over a couple of checkpoints,” Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, told Podcast-19 on Thursday.
DeSantis responded Friday, saying his state had a “very low prevalence” of the virus in May and early June and that “there was no justification not to move forward.”
And though the governor did not acknowledge the 11,433 new cases that day, he said the rise across the Sunbelt “is something that we’re dealing with.”
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