The US has once again hit a grim milestone in new coronavirus cases, with the seven-day daily average reaching 62,210 on Tuesday. The number of new infections have tripled since May, and have increased 21% compared to the week prior, according to data from John Hopkins University.
Of all the new cases reported on Tuesday, Florida, Texas, and California accounted for 31,847 as outbreaks in the sunshine belt states continue to spiral out of control. According to Donald Trump however, the continued rise in coronavirus cases is due to an increase in testing. According to the Covid Tracking Project, there were a total of 760,282 tests conducted on Tuesday – the second highest amount processed in a single day.
Despite President Donald Trump correlating the rise in cases with increased testing actual medical experts, including the Director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases Dr. Anthony Fauci, have stated repeatedly that spike in cases is due to a worsening of the outbreak, rather than increased testing. In the meantime, coronavirus hospitalizations have gone up by 5% since the previous week, and virus-related deaths have also been on the rise.
With the surge in new cases, COVID-19 testing infrastructure is struggling to keep up. According to the America’s largest testing laboratories, LabCorp and Quest Diagnostics, the growing demand for testing is slowing down their turnaround time to nearly a week for patients that are not deemed priority 1. Quest stated that it will not be able to reduce its turnaround times anytime soon as long as cases across the US continue to surge.
Information for this briefing was found via CNBC and John Hopkins University. The author has no securities or affiliations related to this organization. Not a recommendation to buy or sell. Always do additional research and consult a professional before purchasing a security. The author holds no licenses.
