The Associated Press reports:

Hospital administrators and health experts warned desperately Wednesday that parts of the U.S. are on the verge of becoming overwhelmed by a resurgence of the coronavirus, lamenting that politicians and a tired-of-being-cooped-up public are letting a disaster unfold.

The U.S. recorded a one-day total of 34,700 new COVID-19 cases, the highest in two months, according to the count kept by Johns Hopkins University. The number of new cases per day is now running just short of the nation’s late-April peak of 36,400.

While newly confirmed infections have been declining steadily in early hot spots such as New York and New Jersey, several other states set single-day records this week, including Arizona, California, Mississippi, Nevada, Texas and Oklahoma. Some of them also broke hospitalization records, as did North Carolina and South Carolina.

“People got complacent,” said Dr. Marc Boom, CEO of the Houston Methodist hospital system. “And it’s coming back and biting us, quite frankly.”

The stock market slid sharply Wednesday as the virus’s resurgence clouded investors’ hopes for a relatively quick economic turnaround. The virus in the U.S. has been blamed for over 120,000 deaths — the highest toll in the world — and over 2.3 million confirmed infections. [Continue reading…]

The Associated Press also reports:

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott said Wednesday that the state is facing a “massive outbreak” in the coronavirus pandemic and that some new local restrictions may be needed to protect hospital space for new patients.

In a series of midday interviews with television stations, Abbott said Texas would again pass 5,000 new coronavirus cases and more than 4,000 hospital patients with COVID-19, the disease caused by the virus. Texas passed both thresholds for the first time Tuesday.

“There is a massive outbreak of COVID-19 across the state of Texas,” Abbott said in an interview with KFDA-TV in Amarillo. [Continue reading…]