Morning Briefing
Summaries of health policy coverage from major news organizations
Curve Keeps Rising At Alarming Pace: US Sets Another Daily Case Record
There was a time in the United States when 50,000 coronavirus cases in a day seemed like an alarming milestone. That was a little over two weeks ago. Now, the number of new cases reported each day is reaching dizzying new heights — and topped 70,000 for the first time Thursday, according to data tracked by The Washington Post. Nebraska, Utah and Oregon each shattered their previous single-day records, pushing the total number of infections detected nationwide past 3.5 million. (Noori Farzan, Armus and Noack, 7/17)
The loss of 969 lives was the biggest increase since June 10, with Florida, South Carolina and Texas all reporting their biggest one-day spikes on Thursday. More than 138,000 Americans have died from COVID-19, a toll that experts warn will likely surge following recent record spikes in case numbers and an alarming rise in hospitalizations in many states. (Shumaker, 7/16)
As clashes over face-covering mandates and school reopening plans intensified throughout the United States, the country shattered its single-day record for new cases on Thursday — more than 75,600, according to a New York Times database. [And] India on Friday surpassed a million confirmed infections and 25,000 deaths, weeks after the government lifted a nationwide lockdown in hopes of getting the economy up and running. (7/16)
Also —
India on Friday became the third country in the world to record more than one million cases of the new coronavirus, behind only the United States and Brazil, as infections spread further into the countryside and smaller towns. Given India’s population of around 1.3 billion, experts say, one million is relatively low - but the number will rise significantly in the coming months as testing increases, further straining a healthcare system already pushed to the brink. (Siddiqui, 7/17)
A thousand deaths a day. Since late May, three months after Brazil’s first reported case of the coronavirus, it has recorded more than 1,000 daily deaths on average in a gruesome plateau that has yet to tilt downward. On Thursday evening, the federal health ministry reported that the country had passed 2 million confirmed cases of virus infections and 76,000 deaths. (Savarese and Biller, 7/16)
