With 9,300 cases in 24 hours, Florida emerges as COVID-19 hotbed

Nirmal Yesoda

Following lockdown relaxation measures, the United States is once again becoming the hotbed of coronavirus with more than 1,000 deaths recorded every day. Adding up the heat to the already existing chaos, Florida on Sunday became the second state after California to overtake New York, the worst-hit state in the United States at the beginning of the COVID-19 outbreak.

On July 26 alone, 9,300 people tested positive in Florida, and the total number of cases has reached 4,23,855. Florida is now just one place behind California, which now leads the country with 448,497 cases. According to the latest statistics, New York is garnering the third spot in the coronavirus chaos chart with 4,15,827 cases.

Even though in the third spot in the number of patients’ chart, New York is topping the death toll chart with 32,000 casualties. On the other hand, more than 8,000 people have lost their lives in Florida.

As several states are now slowly relaxing lockdown measures in an attempt to reopen the economy, medical experts believe that the number of coronavirus cases in the country will surge in the coming days.

United States president Donald had also shared similar views in recent days, and in one of his White House briefings, he made it clear the worst of coronavirus is yet to come. The president also urged people to wear masks and wear maintain effective social distancing to stay away from the virus.

Ashish Jha, director of the Harvard Global Health Institute and professor of health policy at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health believes that the real chaos associated with this pandemic outbreak will be unleashed in the coming days. According to Jha, the initial coronavirus outbreak was confined to urban areas, and he made it clear that things may go out of control if it starts spreading in rural areas and suburbs.