Consider This from NPR - Coronavirus Cases Are Surging Past The Summer Peak — And Not Just In The U.S.

Episode Date: October 27, 2020

The U.S. looks poised to exceed its summer peak, when the country averaged as many as 65,000 cases a day for a 10-day stretch in late July. The seven-day average of cases is now more than 69,000, according to the COVID Tracking Project. The situation is similar in Europe, which just logged more new cases than any week so far.Cases are rising in North Dakota faster than any other state. Fargo Mayor Tim Mahoney recently imposed a mask mandate there. NPR's Will Stone reports on the growing outbreak in the Midwest, where some hospitals may not be able to handle an influx of COVID-19 patients. In participating regions, you'll also hear a local news segment that will help you make sense of what's going on in your community.Email us at [e-mail] more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

At Northwest Texas Hospital in Amarillo, they've had to cut the size of the pediatric ward in half. I am extremely anxious right now. Our MICU has been full of COVID patients for about the last two weeks. We do not have a bed to spare. Dr. Brian Weiss, chief medical officer with Northwest Texas Hospital, said in a public briefing recently they were running out of space for adult patients. But we're having to add more and more units to take care of these patients who are infected with COVID. More people in the hospital, more with COVID-19, and flu season is just getting started. It's the story in almost every state now. This is a difficult race when you can't actually see the endpoint, and I'm sorry that that's the message I have for you. Nevertheless, I'm asking you to fight the fatigue. Illinois Public Health Director Dr.

Ngozi Ezeke had a tough time keeping it together in a briefing this past week. We have had 364,033 cases since the start of this pandemic. And in Utah, public health officials might be weeks away from activating crisis standards of care, which basically means rationing ICU beds. This isn't sustainable and we're exhausted. Katrina Emery, an ICU nurse at the University of Utah Hospital, spoke at a briefing on Friday. She's working 50 hours a week. I've watched as my patient was finally able to hug their spouse after 90 days. Can you imagine being in a hospital for 90 days without the touch or hug of your family?

In my years as an ICU nurse, I have never seen our unit so busy. Consider this. In terms of raw numbers, the U.S. has surpassed the daily peaks we saw in the summer. And other countries are struggling to contain the spread, too. From NPR, I'm Adi Cornish. It's Tuesday, October 27th. This message comes from NPR sponsor,unk, the data to everything platform, helping you turn data into successful outcomes for security, IT, DevOps, and well, everything.

Learn more about Splunk at Splunk.com slash D2E. voting is crucial and i don't give a damn how you look at it misrepresentative democracy a new series about voting in america from npr's throughline listen now it's consider this from n Until now, Europe was doing a much better job than the U.S. at containing the spread of the coronavirus. That's not true anymore. Two-thirds of the French population will be under curfew from Saturday as authorities struggle to contain the second infection wave which is sweeping through Europe. In France, where cases just topped a million, there's a new government-imposed curfew. In large parts of the country, you can't be out after 9 p.m.

Here's Dr. Guillaume Therry, an intensive care doctor in the northern town of Saint-Étienne on French television recently. Our worry is to arrive at the point where we have far more patients and beds, and we already see this happening around the end of October or beginning of November. Spain also just passed a million cases. Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez said in an address, We know what we have to do. The more we stay home and the fewer contacts we have, the more we'll protect ourselves and our loved ones. Movie theaters and gyms are closed in Italy. Restaurants have to shut down at 6 p.m. too, much earlier than the typical Italian

dinnertime. The Czech Republic has been hit really hard. And Belgium. The health minister there recently called the situation the most dangerous in all of Europe. And a doctor told Sky News it feels like the hardest hit parts of Italy did months ago. The doctor we spoke to said many people are now calling this part of Belgium the new Lombardy, referring to the Italian region hit so hard by COVID in the first wave. Across the whole continent, in terms of total new cases, last week was the worst ever. Over 8 million confirmed cases of COVID so far, including almost a million new infections in the past week.

The highest among the World Health Organization's six regions. Some of that reporting from NPR's Eleanor Beardsley in Paris. Of course, the reason cases are rising in so many places, more social gatherings. All the sports started back up. Our college students started and our schools started at the same time. And it just seemed whereas we had more and more social people gathering about, our numbers started to climb. Tim Mahoney, the mayor of Fargo, North Dakota, had resisted imposing a mask mandate until a week ago. That's when cases in North Dakota per capita started to look worse than any other state. We've been very pleased with the compliance. We've had it now a week and I was out

over the weekend. I think our compliance has jumped considerably throughout the community. But the mandate has no enforcement mechanism and it's now the only mask mandate in the entire state. So Mahoney is trusting people in Fargo to follow the rules. He spoke to my colleague Ari Shapiro about that. Earlier this month, you voted against a mask mandate. You said it was an emotional issue that would tear the city apart. What changed for you? Well, actually, the original motion I voted against was with enforcement. I just felt it put the policeman in a bad position to be arresting people for not wearing masks. So I did ask the commissioner to put up one without enforcement, which he declined. So the way I did my order is that I didn't need the

permission of the commission. We just came out. All the stuff I was getting from health professionals was that we needed to do something because our numbers continued to climb. And it seemed to me as if we can move the dial a bit with varying masks, that was very beneficial for the community. But there has been a lot of controversy. I mean, there was a viral video in which one of your colleagues, City Commissioner Dave Pepkorn, said that masks don't work, which is not supported by the science. What do you do to overcome this divide within your own community and your own City Commission? Well, what we did is we've been trying to educate, and I actually feel that he misunderstood

the reason the mask and I was changed his mind a bit on that. We know mask work. I've been a surgeon for 45 years. When patients don't get infected, you wear your mask. And this is a different type of disease is that you need to do whatever tool you can use. So I think it does two things. You wear a mask, you are more inclined to social distance, you're more inclined to remember to wash your hands. And I think the combination of that helps. And that's what I'm betting on. So we've seen our numbers drop some. I'm going to see and watch what happens the next 10 days. But I do feel that people follow the science. It does work. How's the economy doing? I know things were okay early on when Fargo didn't have a lot of cases. What about now?

Well, it's kind of a funny community. We've had our biggest buildings boom that we've had for a while. Second highest, I'm sure because of interest rates. Our sales tax, which we thought would go down 10 to 15% is running at 4% of where we expected it to be as well. So people are buying online, people are buying throughout the community. And so we've actually been getting through this without as much effects that we thought we might have. Restaurants are open 25% in-house dining. I think overall, we've been mildly surprised that we're surviving that. I imagine whatever outdoor dining has been happening in Fargo won't be happening much longer given the season change. You know that outside dining gets a little tough when it's 25 degrees out and we have snow on the ground.

But if anyone can tough it out, it's the North Dakotans. You know that? Well, we just wear our coats and sit outside. Tim Mahoney, Mayor of Fargo. The fall spike in cases isn't limited to any one part of the country, but some areas of the Midwest are really not doing well. These are places that didn't feel the worst of the pandemic when it first hit in the spring, places with less intense summer outbreaks, and places without the hospital capacity of larger cities. Here's NPR's Will Stone.

Since the late summer, Dr. Misty Anderson has worried about the pandemic's grip on North Dakota's small cities and towns, places like where she lives an hour west of Fargo. Never lost any patients until recently and lost a couple in just one week. And it has gotten into a nursing home in our area. Anderson is an internist and president of the State Medical Association. And she's keenly aware of how even the most rural communities are at risk. She's actually from a small county with only about 1,300 people just over the border in South Dakota. Because it got into their school. It got into their bank. People my mom works with and know, like they had it. No one is immune from this, no matter how rural you are. The U.S. is

careening toward a devastating fall and winter. Cases are rising in most of the country, up more than 30% from just two weeks ago. But the Midwest has hurtled past those numbers. The Dakotas, Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, in all of those states, average daily infections have jumped more than 60% since early October. This is straining hospitals, especially in rural communities like Wishick, North Dakota. Beverly Vilhauer is CEO of South Central Health there. I think our biggest challenge right now has been finding beds when we need it. Her hospital has two dozen beds, but can only staff about six to eight at a time. Vilhauer says they're transferring patients, sometimes even out of state, if the person is seriously ill.

Sometimes it is kind of displacing those patients out of what we call our service area. The bigger hospitals are running out of ICU beds. This is the situation for many small hospitals at the moment. In Carroll County, a hotspot in the west of Iowa, about 20 percent of tests are coming back positive. That's really high. We've actually expanded our COVID unit three times. That's Ed Smith, who's CEO of St. Anthony Regional Hospital. Smith says the biggest challenge remains staffing, with their own health care workers getting exposed while out in the community. And we're seeing greater absenteeism at work due to employee illness or their kids or their husbands.

Iowa, like the Dakotas and Missouri, does not have a statewide mask mandate. Neither does Oklahoma, but it does have some local mandates. It's clear that those communities with mask mandates have a more flat trajectory. That's Aaron Wendelboe, a professor of public health at the University of Oklahoma. He says the state has been playing catch-up on the pandemic for months. We really could have done better during the summer to prevent some cases and not be so full in our hospitals. I think that transmission really does reflect just the community's behavior. And like so many public health experts, he's hoping that behavior changes heading into fall

and winter, a time that many predict to be the darkest for the U.S. pandemic. NPR's Will Stone. It's Consider This from NPR's Will Stone. It's Consider This from NPR. I'm Audie Cornish.