(Washington) The United States exceeded Wednesday three million registered cases of COVID – 19, but the government of Donald Trump announces encouraging signs in some homes of the pandemic, which remain to be confirmed, and advocates a total reopening of schools at the start of the school year.
Posted on July 8 2020 at 10 h 46 Updated to 13 h 06
Ivan Couronne
France Media Agency
The country had taken three months to reach a million cases at the end of April, at the same time as the European Union. Meanwhile, the United States has detected two million new cases when the EU added them 270 00 0. The last million were added in less than a month.
Americans have never left their first wave, which has moved geographically, and in several of the most populous states, such as Texas and Florida, the trend since June is an increase in cases, beds busy hospitals, and deaths.
Vice-president Mike Pence however announced positive “first indications” about a stabilization of the epidemic in certain cities, in particular a stabilization of the percentage of positive results among the tests carried out in Arizona, and visits to emergencies stabilizing in Florida.
“We flattened the curve before, we slowed contagions before, and we can start again,” said Mike Pence, always inclined to minimize the alerts of the type of those launched by Dr. Anthony Fauci, the director of the Institute of Infectious Diseases.
“Keep doing what you're doing, because we're starting to see the first signs,” said Mike Pence, recommending wearing the mask again. He himself had one on his face when he arrived at the press conference, which he did not do before.
The mask is now compulsory in public, when physical distance is not possible, in 27 50 US states, ASTHO organization told AFP, ten more than two weeks ago, including Texas.
The federal government, which does not control schools and universities, is pushing local officials to reopen the establishments, and new instructions will be published.
While the Centers for Disease Prevention and Control (CDC) previously promoted the possibility for students to stay at home, as the least risky option, the discourse changed after Donald Trump has firmly taken a stand for reopening. He directly criticized the agency’s guidelines in a tweet Wednesday morning.
“It's not a question of whether schools should reopen, but how. They must reopen completely, and be fully operational, “said education secretary Betsy DeVos a few hours later.
“Our recommendations are not mandatory,” added CDC director Robert Redfield.
Donald Trump is not isolated on this question, however: the American Academy of Pediatrics has taken a position in favor of reopening schools, after the negative experience of distance education in the spring, and school dropout cases.
Two countries
Donald Trump tweeted again on Wednesday that “the coronavirus mortality rate (had) been divided by ten! ”
This statement is misleading: it is true that on average, the country is far from the April death records, when the daily balance exceeded 3000 dead, against an order of 600 in recent days.
But there are two countries in one: the Northeast is lowering its balance sheets, which compensates for the indisputable increases in the South and in the West.
In many regions of the South and West, the number of cases is increasing faster than the number of tests, which proves that the virus is circulating more and more and that the increase in cases is not only due to the detection of mild and asymptomatic cases which would not have been detected in the spring, when there was a shortage of tests.
Arizona has double the number of daily deaths a month ago (42 died per day in average for the past week, against 19 dead, according to the Covid Tracking Project). The number of coronavirus patients hospitalized there tripled in one month.
In Australia, Melbourne has reconfigured itself after having recorded 191 new cases in 24 hours. Texas and Florida have announced more than 10 00 0 Tuesday, but the inhabitants remain unconfined.