The United States has set a new daily record for new daily coronavirus cases as governor’s in some states are forced to pause their reopening’s as infections surge.
The country confirmed a record-breaking 40,401 new cases of the disease on Thursday, surpassing the country's last highest total in April by more than 3,000, The Hill reported.
The incremental rise in numbers in at least 26 states have forced governors in certain states to pause the re-opening of their economies.
In Texas, governor Greg Abbott announced that the state would be pausing any further re-openings as the recorded number of cases in the state surpassed 132,000.
The state began reopening non-essential businesses in May with reduced capacity including Restaurants, gyms, retailers, professional sports, bars.
Businesses that have already opened will be allowed to remain open, but any further steps will be put on hold as the state reported a record number of 2793 hospitalizations on Wednesday, according to The Post.
California has also seen an incremental rise of the state’s daily case number for the fourth time in a week with 5,019 new cases on Monday.
In Florida, officials announced 3,289 confirmed new cases in a day as infections surpassed 100,000.
Florida governor Ron DeSantis faced accusations on Friday that his administration is “cooking the books” in an attempt to downplay the impact of the virus.
Rebekah Jones, who was previously in charge of Florida’s Covid-19 public database, claimed that she was fired in May for refusing to manipulate its figures, reports said.
Ms Jones alleged that she had evidence that employee’s of the state’s department of health was “instructed this week to change the numbers and begin slowly deleting deaths and cases so it looks like Florida is improving next week in the lead-up to 4 July, like they’ve ‘made it over the hump’.”
Mr DeSantis has angrily dismissed the claims, calling the accusations a “conspiracy bandwagon” at a press conference on Thursday. “You need to move on”, he said.
Missouri, Nevada, and Alabama also posted record daily highs, according to tallies from The Washington Post.
“It is snowballing. We will most certainly see more people die as a result of this spike,” said Dr Marc Boom, president of Houston Methodist Hospital.
CDC Director Robert Redfield on Thursday warned that the scale of the infection across the country is still likely unknown.
“This virus causes so much asymptomatic infection,” Dr Redfield said according to The Hill. “We probably recognised about 10 percent of the outbreak.”
“This outbreak is not over. This pandemic is not over. The most powerful tool that we have, powerful weapon, is social distancing,” Dr Redfield added. “We have responsibility to practice the social mitigation strategies to protect the vulnerable, to protect the elderly.”
