Cases, Hospitalization Rates Climb In Previous Cold Spots In Post-Memorial Day Surge

The Associated Press: Alarming Rise In Virus Cases As States Roll Back Lockdowns
States are rolling back lockdowns, but the coronavirus isn’t done with the U.S. Cases are rising in nearly half the states, according to an Associated Press analysis, a worrying trend that could intensify as people return to work and venture out during the summer. In Arizona, hospitals have been told to prepare for the worst. Texas has more hospitalized COVID-19 patients than at any time before. (Stobbe, 6/11)

The Hill: US Showing Signs Of Retreat In Battle Against COVID-19 
When throngs of tourists and revelers left their homes over Memorial Day weekend, public health experts braced for a surge in coronavirus infections that could force a second round of painful shutdowns. Two weeks later, that surge has hit places like Houston, Phoenix, South Carolina and Missouri. Week-over-week case counts are on the rise in half of all states. Only 16 states and the District of Columbia have seen their total case counts decline for two consecutive weeks. (Wilson, 6/11)

The Wall Street Journal: Covid-19 Hospitalizations Surge In Some States
The post-Memorial Day outbreaks in states come roughly a month after stay-at-home orders were lifted. Experts urged people to continue to take the virus seriously and not take increased freedom as permission to stop wearing masks or resume gathering in large groups. Dr. Marc Boom, chief executive officer of the Houston Methodist hospital network, said he is concerned by the “array of indicators, all of which are starting to flash at us,” including increased cases, a rise in hospitalizations and a boost in the percentage of positive test results. (Collin and Findell, 6/11)

ABC News: Ominous Sign? Of The 14 States With Rising New Coronavirus Cases, Arizona Has Experts Especially Worried 
Some states with increasing cases (a growing number over the past 14 days), like Montana, Hawaii and Alaska, have so few overall infections that to label their respective rises a spike would be misleading. Other sharp upticks, like Arizona's, in which new cases rose from roughly 200 infections a day in late May to more than 1,400 infections a day this week, are more ominous. (Schumaker, 6/11)

Reuters: Fears Of Second U.S. Coronavirus Wave Rise On Worrisome Spike In Cases, Hospitalizations 
Texas has seen record hospitalizations for three days in a row, and in North Carolina only 13% of the state’s ICU beds are available due to severe COVID-19 cases. Houston’s mayor said the city was ready to turn its NFL stadium into a make-shift hospital if necessary. Arizona has seen a record number of hospitalizations at 1,291. The state health director told hospitals this week to activate emergency plans and increase ICU capacity. About three-quarters of the state's ICU beds are filled, according to the state website. (Shumaker, O'Donnell and Erman, 6/11)

CIDRAP: Models Show Rising US COVID-19 Cases, Deaths In Months Ahead
With more than 2 million cases of COVID-19 detected in the United States, public health experts are revising models meant to guide and inform the public on what the next few months of battling the global pandemic will look like. Today, Johns Hopkins University's COVID-19 tracker shows 2,015,214 cases and 113,561 deaths. The model produced by the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation, influential among members of the White House coronavirus task force, updated its projection of fatalities due to the novel coronavirus, showing the US death toll could reach 169,890 by Oct 1. (Soucheray, 6/11)

The Hill: Harvard Doctor Warns Coronavirus Deaths Could Reach 200,000 By September As States Uptick In Cases 
A top Harvard doctor said Thursday that the U.S. could see its death toll from the coronavirus pandemic hit 200,000 by September, as several states have seen spikes in the number of COVID-19 cases. "The numbers are concerning particularly in states like Arizona, North and South Carolina, Florida and Texas — places where we're seeing pretty consistent increases," Ashish Jha, director of the Harvard Global Health Institute told NBC's "Today." (Johnson, 6/11)

Reuters: 'This Is About Livelihoods': U.S. Virus Hotspots Reopen Despite Second Wave Specter
Facing budget shortfalls and double-digit unemployment, governors of U.S. states that are COVID-19 hotspots on Thursday pressed ahead with economic reopenings that have raised fears of a second wave of infections. The moves by governors of states such as Florida and Arizona came as Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said the United States could not afford to let the novel coronavirus shut its economy again and global stocks tanked on worries of a pandemic resurgence. (Hay, 6/11)

NPR: N.C. Health Secretary Warns Of Surge In Cases, Possible Return Of Stay-At-Home Orders
North Carolina is experiencing a surge of COVID-19 cases and hospitalizations during its second phase of reopening, forcing the state's health director to contend with the idea of a second shutdown. "If we need to go back to stay-at-home [orders], we will," Mandy Cohen, the secretary of the North Carolina Department of Health and Human Services, told NPR's Morning Edition on Thursday. "I hope we don't have to. I think there are things we can do before we have to get there, but yes, we are concerned." (Silva, 6/11)

The Associated Press: Florida Migrant Towns Become Coronavirus Hot Spots In US
When much of the world was staying at home to slow the spread of the new coronavirus, Elbin Sales Perez continued to rise at 4:30 a.m. to report to his landscaping job in a rural Florida town. Now, a couple of months later, as state-imposed restrictions are lifted and Floridians begin to venture out, the Guatemalan immigrant is ill and isolated at home with his wife and children in Immokalee, a poverty-stricken town in the throes of one of the sharpest COVID-19 upticks in the state. (Licon, 6/12)

NPR: Florida And S.C. Report New Spikes In Coronavirus Cases
A record high in South Carolina. A two-month high in Florida. Record hospitalizations in Texas. Several states that were among the first to reopen their economies are now reporting spikes in new coronavirus cases, driving an alarming trend that has propelled the U.S. to 2 million cases. Florida reported nearly 1,700 new cases Thursday morning — "the biggest jump since March," as NPR member station WLRN reported. Hours after the state published that data, Gov. Ron DeSantis unveiled his plan to reopen schools in August, urging local governments to aim for "full capacity" when they resume classes. (Chappell, 6/11)

Politico: Florida Covid-19 Cases Soar In Agricultural Communities
The Florida Department of Health reported a record daily number of Covid-19 diagnoses, which Gov. Ron DeSantis on Thursday said was the result of outbreaks among farming communities and increased statewide testing. The state Department of Health reported that 1,677 people were diagnosed with Covid-19 on Wednesday, the highest number of positive tests since the state reported its first case March 1. The previous record was the 1,527 cases reported on April 3, according to Johns Hopkins University & Medicine. (Sarkissian, 6/11)

The Associated Press: Oregon Reopening Paused As Daily Coronavirus Cases Hit High
Oregon Gov. Kate Brown said Thursday evening that a noticeable increase in coronavirus infections was cause for concern and that she was putting all county applications for further reopening on hold for seven days. The Oregon Health Authority reported 178 new confirmed COVID-19 cases Thursday, marking the highest daily count in the state since the start of the pandemic. (6/12)

Los Angeles Times: L.A. County Coronavirus Cases Rise, Hospitals Face New Danger
Coronavirus transmission continues to worsen in Los Angeles County, officials said this week, and that brings risks as the region further reopens. With higher transmissions, there is a chance that the nation’s most populous county could run out of intensive care unit beds in two to four weeks, officials said Wednesday. The numbers have not reached danger levels yet, but health officials said they are monitoring conditions carefully for any signs of new pressures on hospitals. (Lin and Shalby, 6/11)

Los Angeles Times: Far-Flung Coronavirus Outbreaks 'Took Over The Planet'
The chroniclers of history’s great plagues — physicians and novelists, diarists and archivists — tend to recount uncannily similar moments, always poignant in retrospect, when people allow themselves to believe that the devastation has reached its height. And then it gets worse. The novel coronavirus is no longer a novelty. Some six months after the outbreak began in Wuhan, China, and three months after COVID-19’s formal designation as a pandemic, nearly every corner of the world has been touched. (Bengali, McDonnell, Pierson and King, 6/11)

Dallas Morning News: Dallas County Reports Record 312 New Coronavirus Cases As Hospitalizations Rise
Dallas County reported 312 new cases of the coronavirus Thursday — breaking a single-day high it set the day before — while hospitalizations and emergency room visits also rose. Three new deaths were reported, all of them Dallas residents. The victims were a woman in her 50s, a man in his 60s who lived at a long-term care facility and a man in his 70s. (Jones, 6/11)

Atlanta Journal-Constitution: Against The Unknown, Georgia Hospitals Gird For The Next Virus Wave
With few national policy solutions or vaccine in sight, how quickly hospitals can adapt and respond to another surge in coronavirus infections will be a matter of life or death for the sickest patients. While Georgia’s coronavirus cases are trending flat, a fifth of U.S. states is experiencing a surge, including four of the five states bordering the Peach State. (Mariano, 6/12)

The New York Times: On The Future, Americans Can Agree: ‘It’s All Screwed’
Brendan Hermanson, 51, a construction worker for three decades, has come through the pandemic healthy and employed. At home in Milwaukee, where he lives with his grown son, he tries to tune out the hostile politics in the country and wonders if he should bother to vote again for President Trump in November or “sit back and watch it crumble.” In the Philadelphia suburbs, Basil Miles, 27, isn’t as comfortable. He worries about his ability to provide for his pregnant partner and their 3-year-old daughter after he was laid off from his food service job because of the coronavirus. He recently skipped a doctor’s appointment in the city because he feared armed white vigilantes who were threatening black protesters in the area. (Lerer and Umhoefer, 6/12)