As Covid-19 cases soar in states such as Arizona, Texas and Oregon, U.S. governors are again in the crucible, facing wrenching choices about how to balance economic recovery and the health of citizens.

The leaders have already begun taking divergent approaches, inflaming tensions within states as well as with neighbors. While some have paused to reassess the wisdom of allowing movement and commerce, many are plunging ahead despite daunting numbers like Florida’s 2.8% increase in reported cases Friday, its largest daily jump since May 1.

The clashes come about a month and a half after U.S. states began emerging from emergency lockdowns, and as the country surpasses 2 million confirmed infections and nearly 114,000 deaths.

“I’m worried that people have accepted where we are as a new normal. And it’s not normal,” said Tom Inglesby, director of the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security. “We can do better than this.”

“Are we resigned to losing 1,000 Americans a day until we have a vaccine?” Inglesby said. “I hope we aren’t.”

The pressure on the governors reflects the Trump administration’s approach to the pandemic, providing largely voluntary guidance and leaving states to tailor strategy to local conditions. That has produced a patchwork of policies and cleared the way to reopening of high-risk places like casinos and bars.

Indeed, President Donald Trump himself has said he plans to continue holding in-person campaign events, which typically draw thousands of supporters, despite the risk that these large gatherings pose in terms of virus transmission. The president has one event scheduled for June 19 in Tulsa, Oklahoma. On its online registration form, the Trump campaign asks prospective attendees to acknowledge the risk of virus exposure and agree not to hold the campaign liable.

White House economic aide Larry Kudlow said Friday that there is no second wave of coronavirus cases, and in several states with rising infection counts, governors have cited extenuating factors like increased testing, which simply identifies more cases.

Not so in Oregon, where Governor Kate Brown, a Democrat, said Thursday that new cases -- which that day reached 178, Oregon’s highest daily count since the start of the pandemic -- were cause for concern.

Counties there must apply for permission to reopen in stages, but Brown announced that process would be put on hold for a week. She said in a statement that the pause would give “public health experts time to assess what factors are driving the spread of the virus and determine if we need to adjust our approach.”

Cases in Florida have climbed by 9,483 in the past seven days, the biggest-ever weekly increase, but Governor Ron DeSantis -- a Republican and staunch Trump ally -- has given no indication he’d be willing to roll back the state’s reopening five weeks after it began. This week, the seven-day average for new hospitalizations was rising again after a steady downward trajectory previously. Most Florida businesses have returned to operations, including bars, movie theaters and some theme parks.

On Thursday, even as the numbers continued to tick up sharply, Florida forged ahead. DeSantis appeared maskless at an event to celebrate bringing the Amateur Athletic Union Junior Olympic Games to Brevard County this summer. His administration unveiled recommendations for how to reopen schools in August. And, climactically, Trump said he will accept the Republican nomination that month in Jacksonville. The president had been in a feud with North Carolina’s governor over social distancing requirements at the Republican convention in Charlotte.

In Florida, smaller cities and towns that were initially spared by the new virus have seen some of the biggest percentage jumps in the past week, fitting a similar pattern across states.

DeSantis has repeatedly attributed Florida’s uptick to expanded testing and, for weeks, he relied on the low positivity rate to justify his continued rollback. Lately, as the positivity rate rose, he’s begun to acknowledge outbreaks but on Thursday stressed that they were mostly isolated among long-term care facilities, prisons and farmworkers.

“Those tend to be the areas where you see more significant outbreaks,” he said from Melbourne. “General public: You do see cases, but if you do 2,000 tests one day, 4,000 tests the next, you’re going to get more positives when you do the 4,000.”

In Arizona, where virus cases increased in recent weeks, the hospital system Banner Health this week tweeted that the increase in coronavirus is worrisome, “and also correlates with a rise in cases that we are seeing in our hospital ICUs.” The number of Covid-19 patients on ventilators had quadrupled since mid-May, it said.

But on Thursday, Governor Doug Ducey, a Republican, said the state has hospital capacity and claimed “misinformation” had been spread on the subject.

Ducey acknowledged that virus cases are increasing and “not the direction we want to go,” but said a new lockdown isn’t under discussion.

Will Humble, executive director of the Arizona Public Health Association and a former director of the Arizona Department of Health Services, said that when the state reopened, it implemented little in the way of public-health requirements, and as a result some businesses like bars have come to look like they did pre-pandemic.

“This all happened after a really successful stay-at-home order,” he said. “Everyone’s sacrificed, everyone got canned, all these people are unemployed, and then when we came out of it, it’s like, ‘Party on, bro.’”

Arizona’s caseload as well as that of Utah concern Jared Polis, the Democratic governor of neighboring Colorado. He said at a news conference in Denver on Thursday that the virus’s resurgence in those places threatens rural western Colorado, which has seen few infections.

“A virus doesn’t understand state borders, of course,” he said. “We watch that and we worry.”

“We’re trying to do this in a sustainable way,” Polis added. “I don’t think it does any good to do something that is so careless that it leads to such a large spike that it leads to enormous economic setbacks for your economy again.”

--With assistance from Brenna Goth.

This article was provided by Bloomberg News.