Two prominent Texas mayors have warned that hospitals in their cities will be “overwhelmed” by cases of Covid-19 inside two weeks, even as Donald Trump continues to portray the coronavirus resurgence nationwide as the embers of a fire he is steadily extinguishing.
“If we don’t get our hands around this virus quickly, in about two weeks our hospital system could be in serious, serious trouble,” Houston mayor Sylvester Turner said on Sunday, the last day of a Fourth of July holiday weekend during which experts feared many Americans would disregard public health guidelines.
“I mean, overwhelmed. Right now we have bed capacity. But let me just tell you, the major problem [is] the staffing. We can always provide additional beds but we need the people, the nurses and everybody else, the medical professionals to staff those beds. That’s the critical point right now.”
Turner’s comments, to CBS’s Face the Nation, came as hospitalisation and Covid-19 positivity rates climb in his city.
Texas, along with Arizona and Florida, has become a hotspot for the infection, recording six straight days of confirmed new cases above 5,000. On Saturday it set a record of 8,258 cases and 7,890 hospitalisations.
“A month ago one in 10 people were testing positive,” said Turner, a Democrat. “Today, it’s one in four. The number of people who are getting sick and going to the hospitals has exponentially increased. The number of people in our [intensive care] beds has exponentially increased.”
According to researchers at Johns Hopkins University, the US has now confirmed nearly 2.9m coronavirus cases, and nearly 130,000 deaths. States which were early hotspots, New York prominent among them, are pausing or proceeding cautiously with reopening plans.
At the White House on Saturday, Trump attempted to downplay the resurgence of the virus, claiming without evidence the infection was “99% harmless”.
“Our strategy is moving along well,” he said. “It goes out in one area, it rears back its ugly face in another area. But we’ve learned a lot. We’ve learned how to put out the flame.”
The president’s words angered Steve Adler, the Democratic mayor of Austin.
“I understand he has a tough job, but it is dangerous not to be sending a clear message to Americans, to folks in my town,” he told CNN’s State of the Union.
“We have the 4 July weekend and we need everybody wearing masks. And when they start hearing that kind of ambiguous message coming out of Washington, there are more and more people that won’t wear masks, that won’t social distance, that won’t do what it takes to keep a community safe.
“And that’s wrong, and it’s dangerous. I just have to hope that people aren’t going to listen to that, and they will stay focused on what they’re hearing here more locally.”
Hospitals in Austin, Adler said, were facing a nearly…
Read More:Coronavirus: Texas mayors warn of ‘serious trouble’ as cases surge across
