Florida’s new hospitalizations and the rate at which residents are testing positive also jumped sharply, and the number of virus patients on ventilators continued to climb in Miami-Dade, the most populous Florida county.

“Some of us are becoming a little speechless here at the status we’re in now,” said Jill Roberts, an associate professor at the University of South Florida College of Public Health who specializes in emerging diseases. “We’re in bad shape here.”

Houston Outbreak
Texas Covid-19 deaths topped 100 for the first time and rose 3.7% to a cumulative 2,918.

New cases are quickly filling beds in intensive-care units in Houston, site of the state’s worst outbreak. Houston’s Texas Medical Center hospitals filled up all ICU beds generally available last week and began tapping converted beds according to its crisis plan. As of Thursday, 17% of Phase 1 surge capacity had been filled, up from 9% the day before, the center reported.

The swelling numbers may presage widespread mortality, said Vivian Ho, a health economist at Rice University in Houston.

“I view deaths as sort of three weeks after, at the earliest, the unsafe behavior, and we just recently closed bars,” said Ho. “I would expect the number of deaths to rise more.”

Governor Greg Abbott expressed concern about the outbreak’s rapid advance in an interview on a Houston Fox television channel. “Today, for the first day, we had more than 100 deaths because of Covid,” he said. “And I gotta tell you, I think the numbers are going to look worse as we go into next week, and we need to make sure that there’s going to be plenty of hospital beds available in the Houston area.”

While health professionals are nearly unanimous in their prescriptions for containing Covid -- mandating masks, limiting movements and policing economic activity -- few state officials have been eager to return to widespread lockdowns. Circumstances are forcing some to reconsider.

In Maricopa County, Arizona’s most populous, 1 in 4 virus tests is positive, its health department tweeted Thursday. The state has seen a 50% increase in cases since June 21, Governor Ducey said Thursday. “We have had a brutal June,” he said.

On June 29, Ducey shut down bars, gyms, nightclubs and other businesses. Now, the state will limit indoor dining to less than 50% occupancy.

Ducey argued that containment measures are working. When he ordered the closings last month, each person infected with the virus in Arizona was estimated to infect 1.18 people, he said. That number is now 1.1, he said, calling it “dramatic movement.”

Anthony Fauci, the nation’s top infectious-disease official, said in a Wall Street Journal podcast released Wednesday that states have a responsibility to consider stringent measures. “Any state that is having a serious problem, that state should seriously look at shutting down,” said Fauci, who is director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. He said some states “went too fast.”

But Trump has made clear that he wants economies humming and schools open. Public health has become politicized while the disease reaches into statehouses and city halls.