France sees 854 new deaths and 36,330 new cases; UK sees highest deaths since May; Italy fears ‘tsunami’ of hospitalisations.
- Rich states’ Covid deals ‘may deprive poor of vaccine for years’
- £45m deal for NHS masks in England collapses amid fraud claims
- China writes Covid response propaganda into school curriculum
- UK Covid death toll rises by nearly 400 in a day
While daily infections are rising in all but three states today, the surge is most pronounced in the Midwest and Southwest, AP reports.
Missouri, Oklahoma, Iowa, Indiana, Nebraska, North Dakota, and New Mexico all reported record high hospitalisations this week. Nebraska’s largest hospitals started limiting elective surgeries and looked to bring in nurses from other states to cope with the surge. Hospital officials in Iowa and Missouri warned bed capacity could soon be overwhelmed.
The resurgence loomed over candidates and voters, fearful of both the virus itself and the economic toll of any new shutdowns to control its spread.
Iowa hospital officials warned their facilities and staff could be overwhelmed without serious efforts to curtail the virus spread. The state’s seven-day rolling average of positive cases reached 36.4% over the weekend, the third-highest in the nation behind South Dakota and Wyoming, according to researchers at Johns Hopkins University. Hospitalisations reached a record 730 on Monday.
Health officials in Nebraska said hospitalisations have doubled in recent weeks, reaching a record 613 on Sunday.
In Missouri, leaders of several rural hospitals raised alarms about bed capacity during a conference call last week with Republican Governor Mike Parson, who drew renewed fire from his Democratic election challenger for his refusal to issue a statewide mask mandate. The state health department reported 1,659 hospitalisations statewide Monday, surpassing by 10 the previous record set a day earlier. Among the five additional deaths was a 13-year-old boy, the first child under 14 to die from the virus in Missouri.
In Colorado, officials said more residents have been hospitalised with the coronavirus than at any time since a peak in April. Flags were flying at half-staff in New Mexico, where death from Covid-19 surpassed 1,000 last week and hospitalizations reached a record 380 on Monday.
How is everyone feeling on this day of days?
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