Several US states see Covid-19 infection spikes as Trump rally looms

LOS ANGELES: Troubling spikes in coronavirus infection rates were reported on Friday in several US states, mainly in the South and West, a day before President Donald Trump was due to preside over an Oklahoma campaign rally that will be America’s largest indoor gathering in months.

“Clearly the cases are rising rapidly. It’s not just a matter of testing more,” said Dr Murtaza Akhter, an emergency room physician at Arizona hospitals, noting the lag time between a positive test and severe illness or death.He said the latest wave of cases has put Arizona’s major hospitals at or near capacity, and placed the Southwestern state on track to surpass New York at its peak on a per-capita basis.

The World Health Organization considers positivity rates above 5% to be especially concerning, and widely watched data from Johns Hopkins University shows 16 states with average rates over the past week exceeding that level and climbing. Florida, one of the last states to impose stay-at-home restrictions and one of the first to begin lifting them, reported 3,822 new cases, a daily record. Its latest positivity figure was 10%, according to the state’s health department.“The situation in Florida and Arizona is really concerning,” William Hanage, an epidemiology professor at Harvard University, adding that the spike in cases was not just due to more testing but indicative of an “underlying outbreak of unknown size”.

Another focus of concern was in Oklahoma, where the Trump campaign will hold a rally on Saturday at a 19,000-seat indoor arena in Tulsa, his first such event since lockdowns were imposed across much of the country in March.

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