Coronavirus cases in the U.S. climbed 47,700 in the past 24 hours, down slightly from numbers last week that were over 50,000 per day. The total count for U.S. cases is 2.958 million and is expected to exceed 3 million by tomorrow’s report. While the death rate climbed over 130,000 to 130,392, this reflects less than 400 new deaths attributed to COVID-19 over the past 24 hours. That’s a rate of 0.8 percent of new cases and 4.4 percent of all cases, one of the lowest in the world.
It’s worth noting that an increase of cases due to reopening isn’t affecting only the Southern states like Florida, Georgia, Texas and the Carolinas. Illinois, Pennsylvania, and Michigan are among the 40 states where the New York Times says cases are increasing. Red blotches, signaling counties with high growth, are popping up across much of the Midwest, including Missouri, Ohio, Indiana, Minnesota and Iowa.
170,000 new COVID-19 cases reported globally, bringing the total to 11.653 cases total. Deaths climbed by 3,801 to 538,828. Australia, which has less than 7,800 cases, has closed the borders of Victoria to keep the rest of the country safe. Victoria accounts for 95 percent of the new Australian cases. To help get the virus back under control, Melbourne will be locked down for six weeks.
He difference in reaction between Australia and the United States astounding. The entire country is reporting less than 200 cases per day and has only 39 people hospitalized, with 10 in intensive care. That’s fewer cases per day than Idaho.
The Economic Toll
While the virus continues to expand, so too does the economic toll as a second round of shut downs is hurting those restaurants and small companies that had experienced a surge of hope when reopening swept their state or county.
While unemployment has dropped and many people are going back to work, here are a few bullet points that show the economic problems are not entirely behind us:
- Delinquency rates on mortgages have more than doubled since March.
- New job losses are more permanent today than they were months ago as business close their doors for good.
- Restaurants and bars are reeling from second set of restrictions. Yelp says that 53 percent of restaurant closures on its site are marked as permanent.
- Restaurants that relied on buffets, salad bars and similar all-you-can eat formats may not be able to reopen until there is a vaccine.
- There are reportedly 3.9 unemployed people for every job opening, meaning that unemployment will remain significant even if all available jobs were filled.
- Air travel of the July 4th weekend was down 70 percent compared to last year. Travel and tourism remain depressed.
- Slate says The Economy is Not Going Back to Normal.
