(Washington) Since last week, more than 500 cases of COVID – 19 occur every day in Idaho, a small rural state in the northwestern United States, illustration of the exponential spread of the coronavirus throughout American geography.
Posted on 19 July 2020 at 13 h 06
France Media Agency
The example of this State of 1.8 million inhabitants, famous for its potatoes and its slaughterhouses, corresponds to the explosion of the epidemic in the South and the West, which started in June the total number of cases in the United States, as New York and the Northeast succeeded in taming the virus.
Prior to 13 Idaho reported less than 50 new cases per day. He reported 550 on Sunday, and more than 700 last Thursday.
Relative to the population, the number of contagions in the state of Idaho over the past seven days is eighth in the country (231 new cases for 100 00 0 inhabitants), just behind the great southern and western states like Florida , Louisiana and Texas, according to data from New York Times .
Never since the start of the epidemic had so many hospital beds been occupied in Idaho by coronavirus patients (224 at 15 July, according to the latest official data); in April, the maximum number of hospitalizations was 50.
The death toll in the state remains low (between 1 and 4 per day), but this is more than throughout the month of June, when one death per day was recorded.
“Very disturbing increases in rural America, which has much smaller hospital capacities and more difficult to increase in emergencies,” Ashish Jha, director of the Harvard Global Health Institute, commented on Twitter.
The state governor, Republican Brad Little, has several times postponed the total reopening of the economy, initially scheduled for the end of June, but all shops and services, including nightclubs, are open, with restrictions to ensure physical distancing.
PHOTO JIM WATSON, FRANCE-PRESSE AGENCY
Vice President Mike Pence listens to Governor Brad Little at a White House event on 15 July.
The largest city in the state, Boise, where the epidemic is concentrated, imposed on July 4 the wearing of masks in public spaces indoors and outdoors. But elsewhere in the state, the idea of a bond is facing opposition from residents, which has bent health officials in northern Idaho who were considering it, according to the local newspaper Spokesman-Review .
Similar scenes of anti-mask protests are recurring across rural America, since decisions depend on local authorities, President Donald Trump having preferred to leave the responsibility to the states. He insisted on Sunday that he had no plans to impose the mask across the country.