The virus surge is gaining momentum around the world, once in the middle of the country

For the past two months, provincial counties and medium-sized cities in the Great Plains and Upper Midwest have been the main drivers of the rapid growth of US coronavirus cases.

However, the virus seems to have recently entered a new stage. The reason the country continues to break case records has nothing to do with North Dakota and Wisconsin, rather than the rapid resurgence of the virus in cities such as Baltimore and Los Angeles. It soared for the first time in small cities far from the center of the country, such as Miami and Phoenix, and Cumberland, Maryland.

“Our people are tired,” said Maggie Hansen, Chief Nursing Officer for the Memorial Healthcare System in South Florida. “They are tired and can’t see the end.”

In the face of the virus, Joe Biden, in the presidential election, offered words of encouragement, “I have real hope, concrete hope,” in search of rallying the country on the eve of Thanksgiving. He urged Americans to wear face masks to increase their social distance and to “cling” when they faced a long and harsh winter.

“Looking back at our history, we can see that the souls of our country were in the most difficult situation to be trained,” Biden said.

In words that acted as a tacit denial of President Donald Trump, he urged Americans to gather to fight the virus. “I know the country is tired of fighting,” Biden said. “We need to remember that we are at war with the virus, not each other, not each other.”

Coronavirus cases appear in the largest number of pandemics, with an average of over 175,000 per day, in countries experiencing more cases and deaths than anywhere else in the world. More than 1.2 million cases were confirmed in the United States last week alone, and the United States is at a pace to reach 13 million known cases in the coming days. Deaths are also rising rapidly, with more than 2,200 people announced nationwide on Tuesday, the highest number of days since early May.

The epidemic of the virus is rampant in the Great Plains and the Upper Midwest. Iowa and South Dakota continue to report new cases at the highest rates in the country, with record-high deaths. However, the pace of spread has slowed in these regions, rapidly in other populous regions of the country, such as California, where more than 17,000 cases were announced on Monday, and Texas, where more than 20,000 cases were announced on Tuesday. Is increasing. Two best daily totals for any state during a pandemic.

Hannah Grapevine will disinfect the door handles of the Zandbros Variety Store in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, on Tuesday, November 17, 2020. In the Sioux Falls region, there are the sixth highest number of cases per capita in the American metropolitan areas.Chara Kessler / New York Times

All of this is unfolding the night before infectious disease experts consider it a potential turning point in the country. Dr. Eli Perencevich, an infectious disease specialist and epidemiologist at the University of Iowa, said he feared that the worst would still come to his state, especially in the face of Thanksgiving rallies and the cold weather.

“We’re worried that things will get worse because human behavior can be so different indoors and outdoors when it gets cold,” said Perensbitch, who treated a patient with a coronavirus. “And given that the hospital is completely full, we all know Thanksgiving, which is just brave.”

Unlike spring, when the northeast faced the worst, and summer, when Sunbelt experienced explosive growth, this latest surge has begun to move beyond a single region. In fact, it’s returning to places like New York City that have suppressed previous outbreaks and destroyed cities where many cases haven’t been seen before.

“People want normal, they’re just loose,” said Cindy Kirkart, who runs a food bank in Huntington, West Virginia. There are an average of 250 cases per day in the region, more than three times the month. Previous. “As the pandemic fatigue and all the political stuff approached the election day, there was a lot of contribution.”

Cumberland, a small city in Panhandle in the Appalachian Mountains of Maryland, also avoided the worst of the first few months of the pandemic.

By midsummer, the Gothic Revival landmark Emmanuel Anglican, overlooking downtown the city, invited people to service while checking disinfectants and temperatures. Church parish ministers, part-time priests, and their spouses ate together on a regular basis, but usually stayed outdoors and took precautions.

And even though cases began to increase in the northern plains this fall, infections remained relatively low around Cumberland and many other cities on the Mid-Atlantic coast and northeast.

“Then, just before Halloween,” said Rev. Martha Magill, “it just exploded.”

On the first day of November, both the priest and her husband were admitted to the hospital with COVID-19. The per capita outbreak in Allegany County, where Cumberland is the county seat, is currently the worst in Maryland, with the Cumberland region having the 14th most recent per capita case in the US metropolitan area. ..

“It happened somehow quietly, and suddenly it was bad,” Magill said.

About 1,100 miles west of Sioux Falls, South Dakota, the fall surge came early. Mayor Paul Tenhaken said he mistakenly thought that some people in his city had survived the worst after the spring waves came and passed, mainly limited to meat packaging factories.

However, the virus returned and struck the city violently. Two of Tenhaken’s five staff were positive, as were the dozens of others the mayor knows. In the Sioux Falls region, the number of cases per capita in the US metropolitan areas has been found to be the sixth highest. Hospitalizations and infectious diseases remain high throughout the state, but have declined slightly recently. Tenhaken’s anxiety remains.

“I was a little nervous this week on trips, Thanksgiving and meetings,” said the mayor. “I think this is a real test. How hard people are when they go on vacation.”

Elsewhere, in the Midwest, there are local signs of progress, or at least stabilization, but officials say it can all be proven to be momentary.

Minor progress in the Midwest has been the ability of hospital leaders throughout the region to treat the sick after the governors of some states, including Illinois, Iowa, and North Dakota, have imposed additional restrictions. After issuing a public warning that it is in short supply.

In Wisconsin, which reported explosive growth over the last few weeks, reports of new cases continued to grow, but increased by 4% in the last two weeks. In Nebraska, where runaway growth was also seen, the curve flattened to 1% growth. In Illinois, which has an average of more than 10,000 cases per day, infections have leveled off, especially around Chicago.

“This will take weeks instead of days,” said Illinois Governor JB Pritzkar this week. “But is there a faint light of hope? Yes.”

The gradual improvement in the Midwest was offset by increased outbreaks elsewhere in the country. In Los Angeles County, California, cases surged beyond the levels seen this summer, and restaurants were no longer able to serve indoor or outdoor meals from Wednesday night until an average of over 4,000 a day. Around Miami, it is below the peak levels seen in July, but new case reports have more than quadrupled since the beginning of October.

Dr. Debra Bogen, director of health in Allegheny County, Pittsburgh, told reporters last week that the rapid increase in local incidents was facilitated by people’s lack of vigilance.

“The virus itself hasn’t changed. What are our behavior?” Bogen tells the story of an informal homecoming dance hosted by parents of a local school district, leading to multiple confirmed cases. I did.

In Kansas, Anil Garmarker, 41, who owns a trucking company and lives in the town of Oswego, believed that the virus was a “big city problem” and unlikely to affect him. It was.

Then he got infected.

“COVID didn’t care what I believed,” Gharmalkar was treated and received a breathing device implanted in his throat in a video posted by the University of Kansas Health System. “I carefully serviced my lips, and I could have been more careful, and I wish I had done so.”

Meanwhile, the death toll has increased and the virus is rampant. For most Americans, the vaccine is still months away.

What’s coming next? According to experts, it depends in part on how Thursday is done nationwide.

“Thanksgiving hasn’t happened yet,” said Dr. Ngozi Ezike, director of the Illinois Public Health Service, this week. “People can still change their plans and change their outcomes. You don’t have to hold a superspreader event at home.”

© 2020 New York Times News Service