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Coronavirus ‘spiralling out of control’ in US as 26 states report increase in average daily cases

'It is snowballing. We will most certainly see more people die as a result of this spike'

Friday 26 June 2020 14:46 BST

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Dr Anthony Fauci says US facing 'disturbing surge' in coronavirus cases

The coronavirus pandemic in the US is “spiralling out of control,” experts have warned, with at least 26 states recording an increase in cases compared to last week.

California recorded 5,019 new cases on Monday, a record rise of the state's daily case number for the fourth time in a week. In Florida, officials announced 3,289 confirmed new cases in a day as infections surpassed 100,000.

Meanwhile, the governor of Texas urged people to stay home and to wear masks if they leave the house as state's infections tally also rose.

“Because the spread is so rampant right now, there's never a reason for you to have to leave your home. Unless you do need to go out, the safest place for you is at your home,” governor Greg Abbott told KBTX.

The daily number of new coronavirus cases across the US has reached more than 26,000, up from about 21,000 two weeks ago, according to an analysis by the Associated Press.

Experts have said the steep rise in cases is likely to have been caused by states ending their lockdowns too quickly.

“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.

“It is possible to open up at a judicious pace and coexist with the virus, but it requires millions and millions of people to do the right thing,” he added.

According to the latest data from Johns Hopkins University, 26 states have seen their daily number of new coronavirus cases increase: Arizona, Arkansas, California, Colorado, Delaware, Florida, Georgia, Hawaii, Idaho, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Michigan, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nevada, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Texas, Utah, Washington, West Virginia, Wisconsin, and Wyoming.

Cases of the disease are on the decline in 14 other states: Alabama, Alaska, Connecticut, Indiana, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, North Dakota, Rhode Island, South Dakota and Vermont.

In the rest, new infections remain roughly steady.

Inside US hospital: A day fighting the coronavirus

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1/13Inside US hospital: A day fighting the coronavirus

Inside US hospital: A day fighting the coronavirus

Cheryll Mack, 46, a registered nurse in the emergency department, poses for a photograph after a 12-hour shift outside the hospital where she works. "The Covid-19 spread has affected a lot of livelihood, a lot of people's lives. It has created a crisis, death in general. So I would like to ask not one single person, but all people worldwide, to converge and join the platform that this is something that nobody can fight individually," said Mack.

Reuters

Inside US hospital: A day fighting the coronavirus

Dr Laura Bontempo, 50, an emergency medicine doctor wears her personal protective equipment she uses when she sees patients, while posing for a photograph after a nine-hour shift, outside the hospital. "The hardest moments have actually been separating families from patients, there is a no-visitor policy now and taking people away from their loved ones is very challenging," Bontempo said. "I'm used to treating sick patients. I treat sick patients all the time. It's very different knowing that the patient you are treating, is actually a risk to you as well. That's the main difference here. No one who works in hospitals is afraid of treating sick people. Just want to keep staff safe and the patients safe at the same time."

Reuters

Inside US hospital: A day fighting the coronavirus

Ernest Capadngan, 29, a registered nurse who works at a biocontainment unit poses for a photograph after a 12-hour shift, outside the hospital. "The hardest moment during the shift was just seeing Covid patients die helpless and without their family members beside them," Capadngan said.

Reuters

Inside US hospital: A day fighting the coronavirus

Martine Bell, 41, a nurse practitioner in an emergency department, poses for a photograph after a six-hour shift outside the hospital where she works. "The hardest thing in all of this, has been taking care of fellow healthcare providers. It really hits home and it's really scary when you see someone that could be you coming in and now you're taking care of them. It's also hitting home that once healthcare providers start getting sick, who is going to be taking care of the public," Bell said. "It's very stressful, everyone is on edge. We don't know who's coming in next, or how sick they're going to be, or if we are going to get a whole bunch of people or if we're not going to get no one. It's a really stressful and just a completely unusual time for all of us."

Reuters

Inside US hospital: A day fighting the coronavirus

Kaitlyn Martiniano, 25, a registered nurse who works at a biocontainment poses for a photograph after a 12.5-hour shift, outside the hospital. "We have a lot of patients and they are pretty sick right now but we have not yet been hit as hard as New York or Seattle, so I feel like we are very lucky with that so far. Every day you have to just be optimistic." Said Martiniano. "I think the reason that we are not being hit as hard right now is because so many things are closed, and because so many people are staying at home."

Reuters

Inside US hospital: A day fighting the coronavirus

Tracey Wilson, 53, a nurse practitioner in an intensive care unit (ICU), poses for a photograph after a 12-hour shift, outside the hospital where she works. "I had a patient fall out of bed today and I had to call his wife and tell her and she couldn't come see him, even though she pleaded and begged to come see him," Wilson said. "There is a lot of unknowns and with that unknown is a lot of anxiety and stress that we're not used to dealing with."

Reuters

Inside US hospital: A day fighting the coronavirus

Meghan Sheehan, 27, a nurse practitioner in an emergency department, poses for a photograph after a 12-hour shift, outside the hospital where she works. "I think the hardest moment has been the fear that lives within all of us. There is a lot of unknown right now. We fear what's going to happen tomorrow, how the emergency department will look next week when we come in. We have fears about our own colleagues, whether they will fall ill. We also fear that we could be asymptomatic carriers and bring this virus home to our families and our loved ones. There has been a lot of fear over our supplies and whether we'll run out. And then obviously there is the fear that we will see patients and not be able to do everything we normally can to help save patients' lives," Sheehan said.

Reuters

Inside US hospital: A day fighting the coronavirus

Kimberly Bowers, 44, a nurse practitioner in an ICU, poses for a photograph after a 13-hour shift, outside the hospital. "The hardest moment was a young woman who died and her family wasn't able to be here with her," Bowers said. "I think right now, it's just frustrating and scary just not knowing what comes next."

Reuters

Inside US hospital: A day fighting the coronavirus

Tiffany Fare, 25, a registered nurse who works at a biocontainment unit poses for a photograph after a 13-hour shift, outside the hospital where she works. "One of the hardest moments was having to see a family member of a Covid patient, say goodbye over an iPad, rooms away. That was a tough one, I can't imagine how hard it would be to be saying goodbye, you can't see your loved one and then they're gone," Fare said. "My team has been really great to me. We've worked really well together and we've really come together in this crisis. We don't really know each other, we all come from different units within the same hospital, so for us to come together and work so well as a team, it's been a journey but I think that's what is giving me hope."

Reuters

Inside US hospital: A day fighting the coronavirus

Dr Kyle Fischer, 35, an emergency medicine doctor, poses for a photograph after a 12-hour shift, outside the hospital where he works. "Since it's a new virus, we don't have any experience with it. For most diseases I am used to seeing it and taking care of it and this, I don't have any starting place. I know what I'm hearing from New York, I've read all of the papers it seems like, but no one knows what the correct answers are, so there's a huge amount of uncertainty and people are really, really sick. So it's hard to second guess whether or not you are doing the right thing when you think you are but you never quite know," said Fischer.

Reuters

Inside US hospital: A day fighting the coronavirus

Julia Trainor, 23, a registered nurse at a surgical ICU, poses for a photograph after a 14-hour shift, outside the hospital. "The hardest moment was having to put a breathing tube in my patient who could no longer breathe for herself and after the breathing tube went in, we called her family and the husband, of course, couldn't visit her because of visitor restrictions at the hospital. So I had to put him on the phone and hold the phone to her ear, as he told her that he loved her so much and then I had to wipe away her tears as she was crying," said Trainor. "I'm used to seeing very sick patients and I'm used to patients dying but nothing quite like this. In the flip of a switch, without the support, they're completely isolated. They're very sick. Some of them recover and some of them don't. But the hardest part, I would think, is them having to go through this feeling like they are alone."

Reuters

Inside US hospital: A day fighting the coronavirus

Lisa Mehring, 45, a registered nurse who works in a biocontainment unit with Covid-19 patients, poses for a photograph after a 12.5-hour shift, outside the hospital where she works in Maryland. "Seeing these new moms have babies has been the hardest moment along with having do their pumping for the new moms and them not being able to be with their newborn children, it's hard to think of the family that they are missing," Mehring said.

Photos Reuters

Inside US hospital: A day fighting the coronavirus

Jacqueline Hamil, 30, a registered nurse in an emergency department, poses for a photograph after a 12-hour shift outside the hospital. "The hardest moment of my shift today, I was in charge, and we had a really sick patient that was in a really, really small room and usually, when we have sick crashing patients, we can have a ton of resources and a ton of staff go in and help with the nurse and the doctors that are taking care of that patient. But due to the patient being ruled out for the coronavirus, we could only have five or six people in the room at a time and putting on all the gowns and gloves and masks and face shields to protect us in case the patient does have coronavirus, it takes a while, so the nurse that was in there, ended up being in the room for you know 6, 7 hours with minimal breaks and it was hard being in charge and knowing that she was stuck in the room and really nothing I could do to help her," Hamil said.

Reuters

Donald Trump claimed at this first campaign rally in three months last week that the number of cases of Covid-19 was only rising as a result of continued coronavirus testing throughout the country.

“Here’s the bad part: When you do testing to that extent, you’re going to find more people, you’re going to find more cases. So I said to my people, 'Slow the testing down please," the president said at the event in Tulsa, Oklahoma on Saturday.

However, top infectious disease expert Anthony Fauci undercut Mr Trump’s claims on Tuesday, insisting that health policy advisers had not been told to slow down.

“None of us have ever been told to slow down on testing. That just is a fact,” Dr Fauci told a House committee, a direct contradiction of Mr Trump's comments at a rally in Tulsa, Oklahoma, over the weekend.

During testimony to the House of Representatives committee on Tuesday, Dr Fauci labelled the situation “a mixed bag”.

He said: “In some respects, we’ve done very well. Right now the New York metropolitan area, which has been hit extraordinarily hard, has done very well in bringing the cases down and using the guidelines that we have very carefully put together in a stepwise fashion to try and carefully reopen their city and their state.

“However, in other areas of the country, we’re now seeing a disturbing surge of infections that looks like it’s a combination, but one of the things is an increase in community spread … We were going down from 30,000 [new cases a day] to 25, to 20, now we sort of stayed about flat and now we’re going up."

Governor Ron DeSantis said the record daily figures of new cases in Florida were not caused by an increase in testing, as the rate of positive tests had also risen.

In Europe, many countries are seeing a continued fall in cases and deaths after prolonging lockdown and slowly re-opening their economies and relaxing restrictions.

Across the US, more than 2,300,000 people have been infected with the disease with over 120,000 deaths as of Wednesday.

Worldwide there have been almost 9,200,000 infections and almost 500,000 deaths.

Additional reporting by the Associated Press

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