In the United States, more than half of the country’s states, largely in the south and west, see their Covid-19 contamination curves rise rather than descend.
“Many people imagined that everything would be better in summer, that it would be over. It has not even started to improve,” deplored number two of the Centers for Disease Prevention and Control (CDC) on Monday ), Anne Schuchat. “There are far too many viruses in the country (…) It is very discouraging.”
The number of daily deaths continues to decline, which the Donald Trump government is using to minimize the new outbreak. But the number of newly detected cases is higher than at any time since the appearance of Sars-Cov-2 (more than 40,000 per day nationally), and hospitalizations are increasing in several homes like Houston (Texas) and Phoenix (Arizona), which makes fear the worst. In response, the Governor of Arizona, a Republican like Donald Trump, announced on Monday that bars, gyms and cinemas will be closed for at least the next thirty days.
Wearing a mask, an almost political gesture
In this context, the debate on wearing a mask is raging and whether or not to wear one has become almost political. Donald Trump does not wear it in public, unlike the Democrats, including his opponent for the White House, Joe Biden. This attitude is found among the Americans: three quarters of the Democrats say they regularly wear a mask in shops, against half of the Republicans.
According to political and geographic divisions, the authorities are trying to contain the new wave of cases, recalling the dispersed order in which, in the absence of federal leadership, the country had entered and then come out of confinement. Masks are now compulsory in public in at least 20 of the 50 American states, according to the ASTHO organization and AFP. Several Democratic governors (California, Nevada) have decided in recent weeks.
And if Florida refuses to require it, Jacksonville is the last big city in date to have decreed the obligation, according to other agglomerations of which Miami. This is where Donald Trump moved his nomination convention in August.
Patchwork of decisions
Another new restrictive measure decided at the local level: all the beaches in South Florida, including those in Miami, will be closed for the next long weekend, including Friday, which is a national holiday. The mayor of Miami Beach has made it mandatory to wear the mask in public under penalty of a fine of fifty dollars and the city has threatened at least ten days with closings of businesses that do not comply with health regulations.
In California, the county of Los Angeles has also decided to temporarily close its beaches next weekend to avoid a spike in contamination.
Faced with the patchwork of decisions, calls are mounting for a national mask obligation in interior public spaces to be decreed by Donald Trump. “The White House has been in denial on the coronavirus from the start,” notably accused Andrew Cuomo, the Democratic Governor of New York.
For epidemiologists, it is urgent to intervene. 13 states, including the three most populous (California, Texas, Florida), will suffer more deaths in the next four weeks than in the previous four, according to the CDC. With already 125,000 dead, the country can expect to deplore between 5,000 and 20,000 more by July 18.
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