U.S. faces bleak summer as coronavirus infections surge

People wait in their vehicles in long lines for the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) testing in Houston, Texas, U.S., July 7, 2020.

Houston, United States - Authorities have reported an alarming rise in infections in roughly two dozen states in the past two weeks.

The U.S. coronavirus outbreak worsened on Tuesday as more states reported record rises in new cases, and Florida, the third-most populous state, was quickly running out of hospital intensive care unit (ICU) beds.
Authorities have reported an alarming rise in infections in roughly two dozen states in the past two weeks, a sign that efforts to control the spread of the novel coronavirus have failed in large swathes of the country. Montana, Oklahoma and Missouri on Tuesday shattered their previous daily record highs for new cases.
The jump has led many Americans to seek out testing for coronavirus. The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services said on Tuesday it was adding short-term "surge" testing sites in three metropolitan areas in Florida, Louisiana and Texas.
In Houston, a line of more than 200 cars snaked around the United Memorial Medical Center as people waited for hours in sweltering heat to get tested. Some had arrived the night before in order to secure a test at the drive-through site.
"I got tested because my younger brother got positive," said Fred Robles, 32, who spent the night in his car. "There's so many people that need to get tested, there's nothing you can do about it."
Dean Davis, 32, who lost his job due to the pandemic, said he arrived at the testing site at 3 a.m. on Tuesday after he waited for hours on Monday but failed to make the cutoff. "I was like, let me get here at 3, maybe nobody will be here," Davis said. "I got here, there was a line already."
In Florida, more than four dozen hospitals across 25 of 67 counties reported their ICUs had reached full capacity, data published by the state's Agency for Health Care Administration showed. Only 17 per cent of the total 6,010 adult ICU beds statewide were available on Tuesday, down from 20 per cent three days ago.
Health officials are bracing for a wave of further hospitalisations that could strain healthcare systems in densely populated areas, leading to an uptick in deaths from the COVID-19 respiratory illness. Increased deaths tend to lag a rise in new cases by a month or longer.
More than 130,000 Americans have died from the illness - about a quarter of the global total. A widely cited model from the University of Washington's Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation projected on Tuesday that U.S. deaths would reach 208,000 by November 1.
Coronavirus cases in Florida, a state with a large elderly population, have soared in the last month, with the daily count of new cases topping 10,000 three times in the last week. Covid-19 fatalities were up nearly 19 per cent in the last week compared with the week prior, bringing the state's death toll to more than 3,800.
"A lot of this is being driven by young people, under 40... They're less at risk," Florida Governor Ron DeSantis said at a news conference in Miami about the spike in new cases.

'PRESSURE ON GOVERNORS'