Shomporko Desk:-New COVID-19 cases in the U.S. have surged to their highest level in two months and are now back to where they were at the peak of the outbreak.
The U.S. on Tuesday reported 34,700 new cases of the infection, as indicated by a count compiled by Johns Hopkins University that was published Wednesday. There have been just two earlier days that the U.S. has reported more cases: April 9 and April 24, when a record 36,400 cases were logged.
New cases in the U.S. have been surging for over seven days in the wake of slanting down for over about a month and a half. While early hot spots like New York and New Jersey have seen cases steadily decrease, the infection has been hitting the south and west. A few states on Tuesday set single-day records, including Arizona, California, Mississippi, Nevada and Texas.
In the U.S. state of Arizona, which on Tuesday reported a record 3,600 new infections, hundreds of young conservatives packed a megachurch to hear President Donald Trump’s call for them to back his reelection bid.
As he did at a rally in Oklahoma over the weekend, Trump referred to the virus with a pejorative term directed at its emergence in China.
Ahead of the event, the Democratic mayor of Phoenix, Kate Gallego, made clear that she did not believe the speech could be safely held in her city — and urged the president to wear a face mask. He did not. Trump has refused to wear a mask in public, instead of turning it into a red-vs.-blue cultural issue.
Earlier Tuesday, Dr. Anthony Fauci told Congress that the next few weeks are critical to tamping down the surge.
“Plan A, don’t go in a crowd. Plan B, if you do, make sure you wear a mask,” said Fauci, the infectious disease chief at the National Institutes of Health.
Worldwide, more than 9.2 million people have contracted the virus, including more than 477,000 who have died, according to figures compiled by Johns Hopkins University.
Photo credit: AP Photo/Mark Schiefelbein
News Source: The Associated Press
