July continues to look like April for the United States, with the death toll for the novel coronavirus reaching more than 1,000 fatalities for the second day in a row as cases continue to surge across much of the South and Western parts of the country, according to a news report from the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy (CIDRAP) at the University of Minnesota.
According to the COVID-19 tracker maintained by Johns Hopkins University, there were over 71,000 new cases and approximately 1,200 deaths recorded in a 24-hour period, raising the national total to more than 4 million cases and over 144,000 deaths.
The nation first reached 1 million cases at the end of April but saw 3 million cases on July 7. Hospitalization rates continue to follow the increasing case counts. According to the New York Times, rates are now approaching the same numbers seen in mid-April, when New York City was the epicenter of the outbreak. Texas and Florida account for many of the hospitalizations, and to a lesser extent, Las Vegas, Nashville, and Tulsa.
White House coronavirus task force leader Deborah Birx, MD, warned several state and city leaders that Baltimore, Cleveland, Columbus, Indianapolis, Minneapolis, Las Vegas, Miami, Nashville, New Orleans, Pittsburgh, and St. Louis were seeing notable increases in percent positive test results, according to an exclusive report from The Center of Public Integrity. Birx relayed this information on a phone call and urged city leaders to take aggressive actions against current outbreaks.
"What started out very much as a southern and western epidemic is starting to move up the East Coast into Tennessee, Arkansas, up into Missouri, up across Colorado, and obviously we're talking about increases now in Baltimore," Birx said, according to a transcript of the call obtained by the Center. "So, this is really critical that everybody is following this and making sure they're being aggressive about mitigation efforts."
