The World Health Organization (WHO) issued a sobering warning late this week about the status of the coronavirus pandemic, saying that the virus that has killed more than 460,000 people worldwide is still malignant.
“The pandemic is accelerating. More than a 150,000 new cases of COVID-19 were reported [on Thursday], the most in a single day so far,” WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said in a press conference Friday.
He added, “The world is in a new a dangerous phase. The virus is still spreading fast, it is still deadly and most people are still susceptible. We call on all countries and all people to exercise extreme vigilance.”
Tedros said that more than half of the 150,000 cases were from the Americas, with a significant number of cases coming from Asia as well.
The U.S., which leads the world in confirmed cases and deaths, has seen a spike in cases in several states over the past couple of weeks.
Texas and Florida both set records for daily cases, while California officials called on all people to wear masks amid rising cases.
A spike in cases also led Apple to temporarily reclose 11 stores across four states.
AMC, meanwhile, reversed an earlier decision and said it will now require patrons to wear masks when the movie theater chain reopens next month.
In Beijing, a new outbreak of the virus originating from the city’s largest produce market led the Chinese government to shut down schools and businesses while also locking down the surrounding residential areas.
Four states are reporting record highs of confirmed coronavirus cases, raising new concerns that the virus is far from conquered in the United States.
Arizona, Florida, California and Nevada have all reported spikes in infections in the past week, with the news seemingly getting worse by the day.
Nevada had 379 new cases on Monday, the most in a single day to date, but then eclipsed that mark on Friday with 410 cases.
Arizona’s total of COVID-19 cases neared 50,000 today as the state’s surge in additional cases continued to set daily records for hospitalizations, ventilator use and use of intensive care beds for coronavirus patients.
The state Department of Health Services another 3,109 additional, increasing the statewide total to 49,798 along with 1,338 deaths, including 26 reported today.
Earlier in the week, Arizona set daily new-case records with 3,246 on Friday, 2,519 cases on Thursday and 2,392 on Tuesday.
Arizona has emerged as a national hot spot for the coronavirus since Republican Gov. Doug Ducey lifted his stay-home orders in mid-May.
California reported more than 4,300 new cases Friday, the day Gov. Gavin Newsom issued a statewide mandate for people to wear face masks.
Some officials — including President Trump — have downplayed the surge, arguing that the increase in infections is largely the result of increased testing.
The Miami Herald on June 12 published an analysis of the underlying data that shows coronvirus infections to be steadily rising in the state.
Other states, including Texas, South Carolina and Oklahoma, have also seen spikes in new cases, but few governors have taken action to pause or roll back reopening plans.
“We’re not rolling back,” Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis said Tuesday. “The reason we did the mitigation was to protect the hospital system.”
At Trump’s campaign rally at the BOK Center in Tulsa, Oklahoma today, he said that “Kung Flu” is one of the names for COVID-19, the diseased caused by the novel coronavirus.
Trump , who has previously referred to the illness as a “Chinese virus” — claiming his language isn’t racist if the virus comes from Wuhan, China — made the reference early on in his address. Of the pandemic, Trump noted that his administration has “saved hundreds and thousands of lives” by closing American businesses early to curb the spread of the virus.
“By the way, it’s a disease, without question, [that] has more names than any disease in history. I can name Kung Flu. I can name 19 different versions of names,” he said to the crowd at the podium.
Trump expressed no empathy for the nearly 120,000 Americans who have died as a result of COVID-19.