After a long "plateau" the Covid-19 pandemic is gaining momentum in a huge part of the United States and is also increasing in Latin America, especially in Mexico and Brazil where the daily death toll continues to climb.
In Europe, the situation is far from being as serious, but cities and districts are once again confined to the appearance of homes, especially in businesses.
Texas, freedom-loving and the largest US state in the country, started reopening on May 1, but local executive chief Governor Greg Abbott decided on Thursday not to proceed to the next deconfinement stages in because of the increase in coronavirus hospitalizations.
This large state reported Thursday 5,996 new cases of coronavirus, a new record.
"The last thing we want to do is go back and close the shops," said the Republican.
It is however the new fear of many American officials of a vast fringe covering the South and the West, who observe for a few weeks their hospitals fill with patients of Covid-19 and wonder if it is not necessary, at the minimum, make it compulsory to wear masks in public. Nevada has just decreed it for all closed public spaces, and therefore in Las Vegas casinos, as of Friday.
It is as if the film which had taken place in the Northeast and in particular in New York in the spring was replayed, but in a less dense part of the country, which had deconfined in confidence after having believed to escape the worst .
At 8:00 p.m. GMT, the country had more than 37,000 new cases diagnosed and 692 additional deaths for Thursday, according to figures from the Centers for Disease Prevention and Control (CDC).
Experts have warned that the more than three tens of thousands of new cases now detected every day are at the forefront of an exponential explosion of contagions.
"Over time, these people will start to be hospitalized, and they will start to die," says Harvard epidemiologist William Hanage. "It may take a few weeks or more, but it will. And don't forget that this is happening in a much larger population than the one where the outbreaks of spring broke out.
A second wave was feared for the fall and winter, in conjunction with the seasonal flu, but it is a summer wave that is beginning. While only 5 to 8% of the population has been infected since the start of the pandemic, estimate the American health authorities.
- Peak still to come in the Americas -
In total, the pandemic has left 485,549 people officially registered worldwide, according to an AFP report on Thursday at 8:30 p.m. (0030 GMT). After the United States, Brazil suffered the most deaths (54,971).
Mexico deplored more than 25,000 deaths from the virus on Thursday and some 200,000 people infected since the start of the epidemic in the country of 127 million people, officials said.
The threshold of ten million Covid-19 cases worldwide is expected to be reached next week as the pandemic has not yet peaked in the Americas, the WHO warned.
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