At least 56 intensive care units in Florida hospitals reached capacity on Tuesday, state officials said. Another 35 hospitals show ICU bed availability of 10% or less, according to the Agency for Health Care Administration in that state.
Georgia surpassed 100,000 reported coronavirus cases, becoming the ninth state to pass the mark.
In California, the number of hospitalizations across the state were at an all-time high and the virus positivity rate jumped more than 2% in Los Angeles.
As nearly
3 million confirmed coronavirus cases were reported in the US, the need for testing has increased. That has led federal officials to set up new testing sites in Florida, Louisiana and Texas. But major diagnostic companies have said they are facing
testing delays.
Hospitals in Texas and Florida are flooded with critical Covid-19 patients and some local and state officials have made face coverings mandatory.
Last week, the country averaged just under 50,000 new cases daily -- the highest rate recorded, and twice as high as a month ago.
Texas reported more than 10,000 new cases on Tuesday, marking the highest single day total in the state since the pandemic began.
Dr. Anthony Fauci, the nation's top infectious disease expert, said Tuesday the death rate among coronavirus patients has lowered but Americans shouldn't take comfort in it.
"It's a false narrative to take comfort in a lower rate of death," Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said during a livestream with Sen. Doug Jones of Alabama. "There's so many other things that are very dangerous and bad about this virus, don't get yourself into false complacency."
More than 131,200 people in the US have died from coronavirus, according to
data from Johns Hopkins University.
An influential coronavirus model often cited by the White House increased its projections for US deaths on Tuesday and it's now forecasting more than 208,000 deaths by November.
But face masks could save as many as 45,000 US lives by November if 95% of the population wears a covering in public, according to the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME) at the University of Washington, which built the model.
"It's an incredibly simple strategy and intervention," Chris Murray, director of the IHME, told CNN. "It's one that will save lives, but it will also help the economy enormously because it will avoid shutdowns which will inevitably come when things get quickly out of control in some states."
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