By Gary McWilliams and Nathan Layne
HOUSTON (Reuters) – Florida, Arizona and Nevada recorded daily highs for cases of COVID-19 on Saturday, highlighting the worsening spread of the virus in several southern and western states, prompting some of them to rollback their reopening plans.
Florida on Saturday morning reported 9,585 new infections in the last 24 hours, a record for a second day, while Arizona recorded 3,591 new cases of COVID-19, the illness caused by the coronavirus, matching its prior record on June 23. Nevada disclosed 1,099 new cases, double its previous high.
The surge in cases has been most pronounced in a handful of southern and western states that reopened earlier and more aggressively, serving as a warning to the potentially illusory nature of any perceived progress in controlling the virus.
On Friday, as the United States recorded its largest daily case count of the pandemic, Dr. Anthony Fauci, the nation's top infectious disease expert, said the government's current strategy for finding and isolating infected people was “not working,” partly due to significant asymptomatic spread.
The worsening contagion in states like Florida and Texas has created a split-screen effect, with New York and its neighboring states, which were hit hardest initially, reporting declining cases and forging ahead with reopening plans.
In a reversal of his early moves to relax restrictions, Texas Governor Greg Abbott on Friday ordered bars across the state to close and required restaurants to limit indoor seating capacity to 50%.
The mayor of Galena Park, Texas, a community of 10,000 people east of Houston, said she was heeding a warning from Harris County Judge Lina Hidalgo, who on Friday raised the public threat level to its most severe, a sign people should shelter at home.
“It is crucial to continue to practice good hygiene, stay home as much as possible, avoid unnecessary trips, gatherings, and wear a face-covering at all times when you leave your home,” Mayor Esmeralda Moya said in a statement late on Friday.
Galena Park's curfew will run from 10 p.m. to 5 a.m. daily.
Florida, another state that reopened its economy relatively quickly, told bar owners on Friday to immediately stop serving alcohol on their premises.
Yet despite skyrocketing case numbers, both Abbott and Florida Governor Ron DeSantis have refused to issue statewide mandates on mask-wearing, opting instead to leave that decision to local municipalities. Both Abbott and DeSantis are Republican, the same party as President Donald Trump.
At a briefing on Friday, DeSantis blamed the spike in infections on young people interacting more in the last few weeks, adding that they faced lower risk of dying than older people. Lending support to that view, Florida on Saturday reported 24 additional deaths, well off peaks in April when the elderly made up a larger portion of cases.
But DeSantis also acknowledged that those young people, even if they don't become hospitalized themselves, could transmit the virus to the elderly or people with conditions like diabetes which make them susceptible to severe outcomes with COVID-19.
Earlier this week New York, New Jersey and Connecticut imposed a 14-day mandatory quarantines on travelers from states with high infection rates like Florida, where some 13 percent of those tested on Friday came back positive.
In a disclosure meant to highlight that risk, Governor Andrew Cuomo issued a press release on Saturday saying he had ordered health officials to investigate an outbreak tied to a drive-in high school graduation ceremony in Chappaqua, New York.
One of the attendees at the ceremony had recently traveled to Florida and subsequently tested positive, Cuomo said in the release. Since then, an additional four individuals also at the ceremony tested positive and are self-isolating, he said.
(Reporting by Gary McWilliams in Houston, Nathan Layne in Wilton, Connecticut and Sinead Carew in Maplewood, New Jersey; Editing by Daniel Wallis and Diane Craft)
