Texas Becomes First US State To Exceed One Million Coronavirus Cases
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Texas has become the first US state to exceed one million coronavirus cases, as the virus continues to spread across the country.
The Lone Star state, which is home to 29 million Americans, passed one million cases earlier this week as a third wave of infections hit the US.
The country became the first to record 100,000 cases in a single day on October 30 – a number it then recorded twice more in the following seven days.
A Reuters tally suggests most of the Texas cases this week come from Harris, Dallas and El Paso counties, with an average of 8,000 new cases being recorded every day.
As the number of people seeking treatment continues to rise, medical facilities in the state are staining to keep up. In El Paso, a convention centre was converted into a field hospital in an effort to treat the influx of patients.
Reuters notes that if Texas were its own country, it would be the tenth most-affected country in the world for coronavirus cases. The US is the worst-affected country, followed by India, Brazil, Russia, France, Spain, Argentina, the UK, Colombia and Mexico, respectively, according to Johns Hopkins University.
Texas accounts for more than 10% of total cases in the US, and last week it reported the largest number of new cases in the country.
The Texas Tribune reported yesterday, November 7, that the seven-day average of new cases had more than doubled in the state since the beginning of October, with hospitalisations increasing by 90% in the same time frame. At least 6,068 people were in hospital with the virus in Texas as of yesterday.
Experts are said to have put the rise down to social events such as birthday parties and gatherings for sporting events. They have also claimed that fewer people are following safety guidelines such as wearing face masks and staying at home.
Figures cited by NBC News show that 94% of the coronavirus cases and 91% of the deaths in Texas have occurred since the end of May, after Governor Greg Abbott began loosening restrictions aimed to tackle the spread.
The news of Texas’s unfortunate milestone comes as President-elect Joe Biden promised to implement a new plan to tackle coronavirus cases. During his victory speech yesterday, Biden promised to ‘turn this pandemic around’ with a plan ‘built on a bedrock of science’.
At the time of writing, the US has recorded 9,861,983 coronavirus cases since the beginning of the outbreak.
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