A month into its reopening, Florida reported 8,553 new coronavirus cases this week -- the most of any seven-day period.
In Texas, hospitalizations on Tuesday jumped 6.3% to 2,056, the highest since the pandemic emerged and the third consecutive daily increase.
California’s hospitalizations are at their highest since May 13 and have risen in nine of the past 10 days.
A fresh onslaught of the novel coronavirus is bringing challenges for residents and the economy in pockets across the U.S. The localized surges have raised alarms among experts even as they’re masked by the nation’s overall case count, which early this week rose just under 1%, the smallest increase since March.
“There is a new wave coming in parts of the country,” said Eric Toner, a senior scholar at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security. “It’s small and it’s distant so far, but it’s coming.”
Though the outbreaks come weeks into state reopenings, it’s not clear that they’re linked to increased economic activity. In Georgia, where hair salons, tattoo parlors and gyms have been operating for a month and a half, case numbers have plateaued, flummoxing experts.
Puzzling differences show up even within states. In California, which imposed a stay-at-home order in late March, San Francisco saw zero cases for three consecutive days this week, while Los Angeles County reported well over half of the state’s new cases. The White House Coronavirus Task Force has yet to see any relationship between reopening and increased cases of Covid-19, Food and Drug Administration Commissioner Stephen Hahn said on a podcast.
But in some states, rising numbers outpace increases in testing, raising concerns about whether the virus can be controlled and whether it could overwhelm hospitals. It will take a couple of weeks to know, but by then “it’s going to be pretty late” to respond, Toner said.
Since the pandemic initially swept the U.S. starting early this year, almost 2 million people have been confirmed infected and more than 110,000 have died.
After a national shutdown that helped arrest the spread, rising illness had been expected as restrictions loosened. The trend has been observed across 22 states in recent weeks, though for many the increases are steady but slow. Because overall levels are low, outbreaks in settings where the virus spreads easily, like nursing homes or meatpacking plants, could be influencing the numbers in an outsize way.