(Los Angeles and Washington) The governor of California ordered on Monday to close many businesses and public places in the face of the rapid increase in the number of new cases of COVID – 16, especially in the Los Angeles area, where the next school year will start online.
Published on 13 July 2020 in 11 h 24 Updated to 16 h 34
Laurent BANGUET and Ivan COURONNE
France Media Agency
California was the first state to impose general containment in March, but the number of cases has continued to explode for several weeks and stands at close to 330 000, including more than 7000 dead.
To stem the phenomenon, the governor Gavin Newsom announced Monday the widening to all the State of the closing of the bars, indoor dining rooms, cinemas, zoos and aquariums, restrictions which already applied in areas particularly affected by the coronavirus.
He also decided to close again a series of businesses and services in around thirty counties at risk, including Los Angeles. These latter restrictions concern approximately 80% of 40 millions of inhabitants of California and relate for the moment to the shopping centers, the sports halls, the ceremonies nuns, offices for “nonessential sectors” as well as hairdressers and beauty salons.
In Los Angeles, the 600 000 students also learned on Monday that they would not return to school in mid-August as planned and would start distance learning.
Regain
Throughout the South and West of the United States, mayors are considering going further and deciding on a reorganization, but political disagreements between different jurisdictions prevent a unified and coherent response.
For his part, President Donald Trump maintains his line: “When we test, we create cases,” he said on Monday.
While reconfigurations have been ordered in recent days in Melbourne in Australia and Lérida in Spain, such decisions remain extremely rare in the most affected country on the planet, where a revival has taken place since June.
Officials of the metropolitan area of the largest city in Texas, Houston, which has approximately as many inhabitants as in Melbourne (4.7 million inhabitants), called for a new containment after the detection of 1600 new cases in 24 hours, seven times more than the level that had prompted Melbourne to reconfigure.
“If I were the governor, I would shut it down for two weeks to get the virus out of force,” Houston mayor Sylvester Turner said this weekend.
But the governor of Texas, the Republican Gregg Abbott, did not give in to the pressure, at least not yet.
“It was our last best chance to slow down the COVID epidemic – 19, “said the governor about his recent decision to make masks mandatory in public places, a measure he had long resisted. “The next step will be containment,” he warned.
Texas had started to reopen among the first in the United States, on 1 er may. Bars reopened on 22 but the governor had to close them a month later, and he made it mandatory to wear a mask on July 3.
“I want to say no, no reorganization,” said Linda Padovani, a retiree who does not want her niece's wedding to be canceled, in a Houston park on Monday.
“Do we want to give it to our grandparents? “Further asks a thirty-something, Charles Himes, without mask, but in favor of a reconfiguration. “I don't like the idea, I like going out, but if you have to stay at home, then you have to do it.”
Beds occupied
In Florida, another problematic state, more than 15 000 new cases were reported on Sunday, a record, and the number of deaths also began to increase.
PHOTO JOE BURBANK, AP
In Florida, another problematic state, more than 15 000 new cases were reported on Sunday, a record, and the number of deaths also began to increase.
The chief of the executive of the state, the republican Ron DeSantis, has so far closed the bars, but refused to make the wearing of the mask compulsory or to re-trigger confinements throughout Florida, by handing over to city and county officials.
“It's out of control,” Miami mayor Francis Suarez told CNN, adding that the hospitals were not yet overwhelmed, however. As for a reconfiguration, “we have to consider it.”
Disputes between multiple levels of responsibility, in a highly decentralized country, are legion. In California, the initial mandatory mask order was met with refusal by some sheriffs to control its application.
In Atlanta, Georgia, another southern state where the epidemic is taking off, it is the opposite: the mayor ordered the wearing of the mask, but the governor, a Republican, replied that this order “Was just an instruction – both non-binding and legally unenforceable”.
