Covid-19’s Renewed Assault on America Is Gathering Force

What You Need To Know

Since the coronavirus pandemic began late last year, doctors have warned that infections could come in waves. That prediction is now playing out across the U.S.

The virus is now hitting states that largely avoided the first round of infections, with Florida and Texas losing far more residents per day to Covid-19 than they did in the spring. And several states that suffered during the first wave – including California, Louisiana, Michigan and Washington — are seeing case counts, hospitalizations and deaths surge again. Their first brush with the virus, as traumatic as it seemed at the time, didn’t come close to giving them the kind of herd immunity that could prevent another outbreak. And a vaccine remains at least months away.

The U.S. economy now hangs in a precarious state – neither fully reopened, nor fully shut, with officials unsure how to proceed. Urged on by President Donald Trump and their own unemployed voters, governors have been pushing to reopen businesses and ready schools for the fall semester. But surging infections have called those plans into question and forced some states such as California to backtrack, shuttering some businesses for a second time. A handful of public officials, in Houston and Los Angeles, have even suggested re-imposing stay-home orders at a time when Americans are yearning for the crisis to end.