On Tuesday, the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), Dr. Robert Redfield, told a congressional hearing that “one little virus” had exposed the paucity of the US’s public health infrastructure and “brought this nation to its knees” – adding that spending on the Covid-19 crisis would probably top $7 billion.
The seven states – Arizona, Arkansas, California, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, and Texas – are all reporting record-high numbers of cases and hospitalizations, particularly in Arizona and Texas, according to NBC News.
Arizona reported a record high of 3,591 new cases Tuesday, with nearly 60,000 known cases in the state overall. The swell in cases came as President Donald Trump held a rally at a Phoenix megachurch Tuesday. Additionally, there has been a surge in the number of inpatient beds occupied by positive or suspected COVID-19 patients,
Texas and California on Tuesday set new records for the number of new coronavirus cases, passing 5,000 new cases in a span of 24-hours. According to the Washington Post, 33 states and U.S. territories now have a rolling average of new cases that is higher than last week.
Trump administration bails on COVID-19 testing
The federal government is ending funding and support for local COVID-19 testing sites around the country as of June 30. This order includes seven sites in Texas, where cases and hospitalizations are climbing rapidly.
The 13 affected sites are located in Texas, Illinois, New Jersey, Colorado, and Pennsylvania. They were set up early on in the outbreak by the federal government to ramp up testing capabilities and take some of the burdens off local and state governments.
According to Business Insider, funding for these test sites expires June 30, and federal officials are said to have decided not to extend it. The bad part is that this news comes just days after Trump claimed that the US’s high infection numbers were a result of widespread testing, adding that he had asked officials to start scaling back on testing.
