The US COVID-19 toll to hit 3 million cases as Texas health system nears collapse

Benjamin Mateus

The United States will surpass 3 million cases of COVID-19 today, with over 133,000 deaths. It was exactly one month ago when this figure passed the 2-million mark, just after George Floyd’s murder and the massive international protests against police violence and state repression. Many states had set into motion their return-to-work policies, opening movie theaters, restaurants, night clubs, beaches, parks, pools, and salons.

Yet the coronavirus, as many health officials and epidemiologists had warned, was still very much present and the necessary infrastructure to contain and isolate the virus was woefully lacking, even nonexistent, despite the assurances provided by Democratic and Republican governors that everything was under control.

However, very soon in the month of June, local and state health officials began warning of a rise in new cases COVID-19 cases, predominately along the sunbelt where states like Florida, Texas, and Arizona were the first to open the doors and encourage people to return to normal routines. Besides perfunctory statements that things were under control and admonishing young people to wear their masks and maintain social distancing, no effort was made to intervene.

People wait in line at a free COVID-19 testing site provided by United Memorial Medical Center, at the Mexican Consulate, in Houston. (Image Credit: AP Photo/David J. Phillip)

On June 7, the United States saw its lowest daily count since the pandemic hit in force, with 18,930 new cases. Yesterday’s three-day rolling average for the number of new cases per day was 52,439, a three-fold increase, though the daily number of deaths has been slowly declining, to just over 500, a fact that the Trump administration and its right-wing media apologists have seized on to dismiss the significance of the skyrocketing number of infections.

Several factors have been cited to account for this divergence. They include the time lag between new infections and deaths, a better understanding of the disease process with improvements in treatments, and the much lower median age of those infected in the June and July surges. Regardless, many health systems in the hardest-hit areas are finding they are at capacity and have been sounding the alarm to reinforce lockdowns to allow the health systems to recover.

Eight states posted more than 1,000 new cases, with Florida reporting a one-day high of 11,458 cases of COVID-19, having surpassed 200,000 cases (100,000 new cases in two weeks). Only two states, Rhode Island and New Hampshire, have what could be construed as slightly declining numbers. Thirty-eight states have increasing numbers of new cases.

Arizona added 3,536 new cases yesterday, pushing the total close to the 100,000 mark. With close to 800,000 tests performed, the rate for testing positive is close to 11 percent. Governor Doug Ducey was compelled to issue an executive order reclosing restaurants, clubs, and gyms while urging the public to stay home as much as possible and to wear masks at all times in public settings. According to the Arizona Department of Health Services, 91 percent of ICU beds and 85 percent of regular hospital beds are occupied, and the likelihood of running out of bed space in a few weeks is a possibility.

Mexican authorities, citing the pandemic surge in the state, have closed the US-Sonora border over the weekend to non-essential travel. Independence Day would have brought many Arizonians to the beach towns of Rocky Point and San Carlos. The cases of COVID-19 in Sonora, Mexico, have reached an official count of 9,000, and hospitals in Nogales and Guaymas are reportedly at capacity.

The situation has grown most dire in Texas as the health infrastructure has been pushed beyond capacity. Texas has also surpassed 200,000 cases of COVID-19, adding almost 50,000 cases in one week. The cumulative death toll stands at 2,662, placing the crude case fatality rate at around 1.3 percent. On Saturday, Texas reported 7,890 hospitalized for coronavirus.

By all accounts, Governor Greg Abbott’s complete indifference to the dangers posed by the coronavirus has led to the disastrous situation where conditions at the hospitals in Houston are now being compared to those in New York City at the height of its battle against the brutal outbreak.

According to public health experts, such as Bill Hanage, an associate professor of epidemiology at Harvard’s T.H. Chan School of Public Health, the crisis in Texas could have been avoided had local health officials been given the authority to manage the outbreak. Only late last week did the governor issue a mandate to wear masks in public and other basic mitigation practices. Vivian Ho, a health economist at Rice University and the Baylor College of Medicine, told the Houston Chronicle, “We’re on the verge of a nightmarish catastrophe. On May 1, I thought we actually had a chance to get this virus under control and get the economy opened up safely. I’m not sure we can get it under control anymore.”

Placing the governor’s actions into context, by the end of April, approximately 2 million Texans were given a pink slip, and oil prices had plummeted to historic lows. Many hard-line conservatives were clamoring to open businesses. Despite public assurance to adhering to guidance from the public health sectors and use data-driven processes, all such measures were quickly abandoned. Any attempt by Harris County Judge Lina Hidalgo to enforce fundamental “mask orders” was condemned by Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick and US Representative Dan Crenshaw, arguing she was exaggerating the dangers of the virus.

Manny Vela, a CEO of Valley Baptist Health System, one of the hospital systems in the Rio Grande Valley, said, “we are now at the point of grave concerns” as local hospitals have started diverting patients from overcrowded emergency rooms. According to the Texas Tribune, 10 of 12 hospitals in Hidalgo, Cameron, and Starr counties are at capacity. They are on patient bypass, meaning they are no longer accepting patients at their hospitals. According to Hidalgo county spokesperson Carlos Sanchez, the number of people hospitalized has tripled in the last two weeks.

According to Austin, Texas, Mayor Steve Adler, speaking with the Wall Street Journal, “We’re on a trajectory right now that we could be inundating our intensive-care units here within the next week to ten days. We’re watching the numbers daily. We may have to take more drastic action.”

In Houston, physicians have to make difficult decisions on who to admit for care. Improvisation is in order as hospitals scramble to accommodate and treat more patients. Staffing is stretched thin, making other functions the hospital performs—elective cases, a sundry of medical services, laboratory testing—backlogged, and extremely limited.

Methodist Hospital, one of the highest-ranked hospitals in the region, had almost 400 COVID-19 patients a week ago Sunday. In a few days, the number climbed to over 600 despite conservative admission criteria and rapid discharges. By the weekend, despite adding 130 inpatient beds, hospital administrators are estimating the system could reach 800 or 900 soon. This has become a typical situation for the hospital systems in Harris County, where Houston is located.

Speaking to the New York Times, Dr. Mir M. Alikhan, a pulmonary and critical care specialist, said, “What’s been disheartening over the past week or two has been that it feels like we’re back at square one.”

Within the Republican Party, ultra-right elements have attacked Governor Abbott, not for bungling the response to COVID-19 and helping cause the public health disaster, but for going too far in restricting business activities. The Ector County Republican Party voted over the weekend to censure Abbott over his handling of the pandemic, accusing him of “overstepping his authority in responding to the coronavirus” and “violating five party principles related to his exercise of executive power during the pandemic.”

At the same time, President Trump continued to dismiss the seriousness of the pandemic, downplaying the rise in cases as the result of “too much testing” and claiming that “99 percent of cases are totally harmless.” There is method in this apparent madness, since the only effective action to be taken in response to the soaring infection rates would be a return to statewide lockdowns, which would tank the stock markets and cause the Dow Jones average to plummet—his sole guiding star.

Sri Lankan president orders Central Bank to give more credit to big business

Saman Gunadasa

The Central Bank of Sri Lanka announced on June 28 that it would make available 150 billion rupees ($US810 million) to the big businesses, starting on July 1. The announcement was in response to a direct order from President Gotabhaya Rajapakse to top Central Bank officials, including Governor W.D. Lakshman, and followed an earlier directive.

The Central Bank announcement said it would “provide a credit guarantee to banks, ranging from 80 percent for smaller loans to 50 percent for relatively large loans, enabling banks to grant loans to address working capital requirements of the [COVID-19] affected businesses.”

Pledging to absorb a “significantly higher percentage of the credit risk,” the Central Bank directed commercial banks to “extend their lending to vulnerable businesses, focusing on the viability and cash flows of such businesses rather than collateral.” The commercial banks, it added, should use the additional liquidity to grant loans at 4 percent to businesses with the Central Bank providing an interest subsidy of 5 percent to cover the cost to the banks.

The statement was issued after President Rajapakse had summoned Central Bank officials to his office on June 16 and accused them for not carrying out orders he issued on March 27. At that time, Rajapakse called for 50 billion rupees to be given to commercial banks for loans to pandemic-hit businesses. On May 20, the Sri Lankan cabinet approved a 100 billion rupee grant from the Central Bank for commercial bank loans.

During last week’s meeting with Central Bank officials, Rajapakse declared that “the people of this country have bestowed a great power on me to build this country.”

Abandoning any pretence of observing the independence of the Central Bank, he bluntly stated that its fiscal policies should be “in accordance with the economic policy of the president of the country.” Providing bank loans, he said, was “a money circulation process” and a “very simple tactic,” and declared, “But, what are you doing?”

Pliant Central Bank officials issued a detailed statement later that night, explaining how they would implement Rajapakse’s previous orders. The Central Bank and the Ministry of Finance are also reportedly considering tax exemptions and concessions, faster tax refunds and collateral waivers for the corporates and other businesses.

While Central Bank officials have not explained why they delayed acting on Rajapakse’s previous orders, the bank is committed to financial targets set down under the International Monetary Fund’s $1.5 billion bailout loan in 2016. This includes ensuring that Sri Lanka meets its financial deficit target of 3.5 percent of gross domestic product (GDP) this year and other IMF austerity demands. The fiscal deficit hit 6.7 percent of GDP last year and is estimated to climb higher this year.

While Rajapakse claims to have a mandate from the people, he came to power by exploiting mass anger against the previous government and its austerity measures. His meeting with Central Bank officials occurred two days after consulting with Sri Lankan exporters who complained about not receiving bank loans and demanded an immediate remedy.

Rajapakse is becoming increasingly desperate over Sri Lanka’s economic decline, which has been accelerated by the pandemic. Economic growth declined in 2018 and 2019 to 3.3 and 2.3 percent respectively. The World Bank is currently predicting growth of just 3.3 percent this year.

In May, Sri Lanka’s export earnings declined by 37 percent to $602 million, tourism has collapsed and remittances from overseas workers fell by 32.3 percent in April 2020 to $375 million compared to same period last year.

The president’s claim that the “simple tactic” of increasing money circulation will revive the economy is an illusion. Hit by the COVID-19 pandemic, the global economy, which is expected to shrink by 5.2 percent this year, confronts the deepest recession since WWII. The latest IMF Outlook report is predicting further growth falls in the US and European Union (EU) to -8 percent and -10.2 percent respectively.

Last month, the Economist magazine rated Sri Lanka 61st out of 66 countries confronting financial distress from public debt, foreign debt and this year’s debt repayment costs. It reported that Sri Lanka was the worst hit economy in South Asia, well behind Bangladesh, India and Pakistan.

Last week, the Fitch ratings agency warned that Sri Lanka’s budget deficit may balloon to 9.3 percent this year and that debt payment pressure will intensify. The agency downgraded the country’s credit rating from B to B minus in April, thereby reducing its ability to obtain loans from commercial sources. Between June and December Sri Lanka will have to pay $3.8 billion in debt servicing and an average of $4.3 billion per year from 2021 to 2025.

Fitch noted that an “increase in external funding stress, reflected in a narrowing of funding options and weaker refinancing capacity, was threatening Sri Lanka’s ability to meet external debt repayments.”

Confronted with this crisis, Colombo is desperate for funds in order to avoid a default on its foreign debts. On June 18, Rajapakse met with European Union ambassadors in Colombo telling them that under the current circumstances, “Sri Lanka would benefit from a debt moratorium.” The government has also requested an $800 million loan from the IMF, which will entail even more drastic austerity measures against the working class.

While providing huge concessions to Sri Lankan banks and big business, the government is imposing increasing economic burdens on workers and the poor.

At the end of May, the government hiked taxes from 50 to 100 percent on essential food items, such as sugar, potatoes, onions, tinned fish, spices, dairy products and fruits. At the same time, employers, with the blessing of the government, are using the COVID-19 pandemic to implement massive job and wage cuts and attacks on working conditions. This assault will intensify.

The National Chamber of Exporters recently declared that labour laws in Sri Lanka “are heavily in favour of employees and prevent flexibility with regards to employment of labour in crisis situations.” It called for piece-rate payments, the “temporary” suspension of provident fund payments and the elimination of holidays and other limited social gains, such as compensation for laid off workers.

The situation confronting workers at Brandix, one of the largest garment companies in Sri Lanka, since COVID-19 hit, typifies that facing thousands of workers across the country. Brandix employed about 47,000 people before the pandemic.

As one worker from the company’s Seeduwa plant near Katunayake recently explained to the World Socialist Web Site: “Before COVID-19 there were about 1,700 workers employed here but that number has now been cut to 600.

“Management is harshly ordering workers around, sometimes telling us to go home if we don’t work fast enough. We previously sewed slacks but are now producing masks. They set a target of 300 masks per day but we’re only able to do 250 pieces. Sometimes female workers are not even able go to the wash room. Incentive allowances, including the attendance allowance, have also been slashed.

“The company has sacked workers who have spoken out against the harsh conditions. Management is nervous about the unrest among workers and is moving people around to different work lines every day.”

“Deep cleaning” in Australian schools: Image and reality

Carolyn Kennett

A growing number of temporary school closures are taking place in Australia because of COVID-19 infections among teachers and/or students. In the state of Victoria, 32 schools have been closed for “deep cleaning” since the return of all students just over two weeks ago, including 22 schools since last Friday.

Despite the concerns of parents and teachers about the safety of returning to crowded classrooms where social distancing is almost impossible to practice, the federal and state governments, both Liberal-National and Labor, have pushed teachers and children back into classrooms as part of the drive by big business to get workers back inside workplaces.

Governments promised thoroughly cleaned classrooms, including desks, chairs and other classroom furniture. The reality is that school cleaners have neither the resources nor hours to conduct the cleaning that is needed.

Instead a propaganda campaign is being waged via videos and media releases where some high contact areas are being cleaned regularly using casual untrained labour, while the vast bulk of necessary cleaning is simply not being done.

Governments are claiming that where outbreaks have occurred, before reopening the school, “all surfaces, furniture and equipment will be disinfected with hospital-grade disinfectant as part of the deep clean.”

Yet the longest time that schools seem to close for cleaning is three days, and this is not even enough time for students or teachers to be tested for COVID-19 and get their results back.

There is no clear definition of “deep cleaning,” although various websites say it is different from everyday sanitation because it involves tasks and activities of cleaning and disinfecting that need effort, time and the right techniques and products.

Cleaners themselves, as well as teachers and parents, are deeply sceptical of the promises of deep cleaning. The large cleaning companies involved are hiring inexperienced and untrained casual cleaners. The WSWS interviewed Tom, who was employed as a casual by one of the four companies contracted to clean government schools in New South Wales (NSW).

Tom spent seven hours each day working in two schools. His main job was to clean door handles, railings and high contact surfaces in bathrooms. He was not allocated time to clean desks, equipment inside classrooms or playground equipment. For some time he was the only additional cleaner hired for the “day shift” at a high school with more than 1,000 students.

One Melbourne cleaner told a daily newspaper: “We don’t have enough equipment like proper cloths and dusters. We don’t have enough to make sure it’s safe. The disinfectant that we are using, we run out quickly. We are not given enough gloves or cloths. We aren’t given masks.”

A survey of 500 cleaners found that 90 percent had to rush essential cleaning in order to complete their jobs, 80 percent lacked essential equipment, 74 percent lacked correct personal protective equipment (PPE) and 70 percent had not received face-to-face training.

Epping Boys High School in Sydney was one of the first schools to be closed due to a COVID-19 infection. Following the closure, cleaners at the school revealed that due to the under-staffing they were only able to clear rubbish on some days, rather than to do detailed cleaning. The cleaners were denied their requests for PPE, including face masks and extra hand washing supplies.

One teacher commented on Facebook: “Wiping over the door handles in the middle of the day is hardly inspiring confidence. Imagine how many cleaners and how many additional hours would actually be needed to clean 21 classrooms, computer labs, libraries, staff rooms, toilets etc.”

In many schools, teachers and students are expected to clean the desks and equipment in their own classrooms.

Teachers are worried about the extra burden being placed on cleaning staff. One teacher posted on Facebook: “Our school cleaner, who used to work from 2 until 6, is now onsite before we come out for recess at 11 and was still there when I left at 5.30 yesterday. She does five hours at another school before coming to us… These are people who are doing a hard, physical job for long, long hours at the moment, with no end in sight. It isn’t sustainable, but they know it will be their fault when this fails.”

Another teacher said: “The cleaner at one of the schools I’m at is doing 12-hour days and they have only managed to get one extra person. ‘Deep cleaning’ isn’t happening, as they physically can’t do it.”

For all the government promises, inadequate funding has been provided. In Victoria, just $45 million has been allocated for “enhanced cleaning” of state schools. In NSW, only $250 million has been allocated for cleaning and hygiene products for public facilities, including schools, Technical and Further Education Colleges and all forms of public transport.

The NSW Department of Education website claims: “Good personal hygiene, including regular hand washing, cleaning and disinfecting and the use of personal protective equipment are vigorously applied across all schools.” But each school has received on average just four bars of soap and about 10 ml of hand sanitiser per student.

Earlier in the year, when COVID-19 infection numbers started to grow, many teachers reported that their schools had no soap available in student bathrooms and hand sanitiser was non-existent unless teachers and students provided it themselves. Teachers were told not to use PPE while at school.

By contrast, private schools have received significant additional financial support from the federal government during the pandemic. As small to medium size businesses, they were able to access payments of up to $100,000 each to assist with cash flow. In addition, the federal government provided them with $10 million for hygiene products and extra cleaning services.

One teacher noted: “Private sector schools have large teams of cleaners working before the school day, during, and after. Quick responses to requests, high-touch areas cleaned frequently with strong anti-bacterial cleaner, all on top of the usual daily mopping and vacuuming etc.” In public schools, daily mopping and vacuuming is a rarity. The Victorian government guidelines provide for only weekly or twice-weekly cleaning, and daily mopping is only scheduled in bathrooms, canteens and sick bays.

The pandemic has highlighted the under-funding of every sphere of education, including the cleaning of schools. The degradation of cleaning in educational facilities through the privatisation of these services points to the incompatibility of the capitalist profit system with the provision of basic human needs—in this case, the hygiene standards necessary to protect the lives and health of teachers, students and parents.

Australian government seeks to place country on war footing

Mike Head

Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison this week invoked the spectre of another world war when he unveiled an aggressive military expansion, clearly aimed against China.

In an address to military cadets, Morrison announced that despite the deepest economic breakdown since the 1930s Great Depression, causing mass unemployment and social misery, $575 billion will be spent on boosting the military over the next decade.

HMAS Parramatta, left, sails with USS America, USS Bunker Hill and USS Barry in the South China Sea [Credit: US Navy/MC3 Nicholas Huynh]

While falsely presented as “defensive,” an expanded $270 billion military hardware build-up features “long-range strike capabilities.” These will start with the immediate purchase of US missiles capable of striking Chinese vessels and facilities in southeast Asia, and which could be reconfigured to hit southern China itself.

“We have not seen the conflation of global, economic and strategic uncertainty now being experienced here in Australia, in our region, since the existential threat we faced when the global and regional order collapsed in the 1930s and 1940s,” Morrison declared. He described the return of these conditions as “very haunting.”

This invocation of an “existential threat” was an obvious reference to World War II, during which the US provoked Japan into a war for control over the Pacific that led to Japanese attacks on US warships in the port of Darwin. Japan, which is an imperialist power, was accused of trying to invade Australia. Such a claim is now being directed, without any evidence, against China.

Morrison’s remarks were uttered in the context of a mounting mobilisation by US imperialism, headed by the Trump administration, to confront China economically and militarily, to block it from ever challenging America’s post-World War II dominance. This is the driving force of the escalating confrontation with China.

The Liberal-National Coalition prime minister identified the Indo-Pacific as the likely arena for a global war. “Our region will not only shape our future, increasingly though, it is the focus of the dominant global contest of our age,” he said. Relations between China and the United States were “fractious” because “they compete for political, economic and technological supremacy.”

First under Barack Obama and now Donald Trump, successive Australian governments, both Liberal-National and Labor, have placed Australia on the frontline of any war against China, including by stationing US marines in Darwin and increasing US access to northern Australian air and military bases. This week’s announcement marked a further, even more explicit, shift toward military conflict against China.

In an effort to condition public opinion for war, Morrison painted a picture of Australia and the Indo-Pacific region under attack by China. Without any evidence whatsoever, he essentially accused Beijing of conducting “grey” warfare via “coercive activities,” “disinformation and foreign interference” and “cyber attacks.”

In fact, the prime minister claimed that a military line had been crossed already. “The threshold of traditional armed conflict in what experts call the grey zone, which is becoming ever present and ever expanding,” he asserted.

Morrison did not specifically name China, but his target was palpable, as every media and military-intelligence commentator pointed out. Yet he offered not the slightest evidence to back his vague and sweeping allegations.

Recent weeks have seen totally unsubstantiated claims by the government and the corporate media of Chinese “cyber warfare” and “foreign interference.” No details of “cyber attacks” have been provided, except admissions that the alleged attackers used software readily available on the internet.

As for “foreign interference,” a state Labor MP was last week labelled a “Chinese agent” by the media and raided by the federal police and the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation (ASIO) for making comments critical of the US-led demonisation of China.

In reality, the US ruling elite is the greatest source of “cyber warfare” and “foreign interference” in Australia. That was underlined recently when US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo warned that the US would “simply disconnect” Australia from its telecommunications, military and intelligence networks if any Australian government made an agreement with China deemed to endanger US “national security.”

Morrison specifically referred to rising “tensions over territorial claims” on China’s borders, including the South China Sea, and declared: “The risk of miscalculation and even conflict is heightening.”

But it is the US, backed by Australia, that has conducted repeated military provocations inside the territorial waters around Chinese-claimed islets in that sea ever since 2010. That was when the then US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton declared that the US had a “national interest” in determining who controlled the outcrops, thousands of kilometres from the United States.

Again, without the slightest evidence, Morrison claimed that Australia’s “sovereignty” was threatened by China and sought to wrap himself in the cloak of a wartime leader. “Sovereignty means self-respect, freedom to be who we are, ourselves, independence, free-thinking. We will never surrender this. Never. Ever.”

Morrison underlined the Australian ruling class’s commitment to the “ever-closer alliance with the United States,” saying it “is the foundation of our defence policy.” He insisted: “The security assurances and intelligence-sharing and technological industrial cooperation we enjoy with the United States are, and will remain, critical to our national security.”

This pledge was made despite rising concerns in some ruling circles about the continued reliability of the US as a military protector, given its economic and political decay, and anxiety over the loss of the Chinese markets on which mining and agricultural companies depend heavily.

Morrison sought to overcome this nervousness by emphasising Australia’s own re-militarisation. In order to be “a better and more effective ally,” Australia had to “be prepared to invest in our own security,” as well as still being ready to “make military contributions outside of our immediate region” in “support of US-led coalitions.”

So far, Beijing’s response to the Australian build-up has been muted, reflecting the Chinese regime’s hopes of averting a potentially catastrophic nuclear war with the US and its allies. But an article in the state-controlled Global Times on Friday said analysts had noted the specific weapons that Australia will acquire were “obviously” not for defence within Australian borders but for “long-range” combat.

Morrison yesterday boasted to the Australian’s editor-at-large Paul Kelly that his government had “crashed through” the target of spending 2 percent of gross domestic product on the military—a proportion demanded of all “allies” by Donald Trump.

Regardless of the economic crash triggered by the COVID-19 pandemic and the soaring budget deficits and government debt, the government was “not going to be constrained by 2 percent.” Australian Strategic Policy Institute strategic analyst Marcus Hellyer estimated that defence funding would grow by 7.2 percent, 9.2 percent and 9 percent in the three years from 2020–21. “What other portfolio can boast such largesse?” he asked Kelly.

In his column, Kelly hailed Morrison’s bid to ideologically prepare the population for war. “Morrison has warned the Australian people the deepest recession for decades now runs in parallel with a heightening risk of military conflict as the sinews of regional prosperity face ‘almost irreversible strain,’ demanding a revamped defence posture and strategy.”

An editorial in the Murdoch-owned newspaper even claimed that Beijing’s crackdown in Hong Kong justified war against China. “China’s police-state takeover of Hong Kong has been compared to Adolf Hitler’s ominous absorption of Austria within the Reich,” it stated. “This strikes at freedom and prosperity in our part of the world.”

Speaking on behalf of big business, an Australian Financial Review editorial also backed the military “build-up,” saying it was “a reminder that the days of risk-free coasting on China boom prosperity are over. Just as in defence, we need to face up to much-needed policy reforms, rather than putting them off because they are difficult.”

In other words, the offensive against China must be matched by one at home, extracting the cost of militarisation and the pandemic-triggered economic breakdown from the working class.

Back-to-work policy accelerates spread of COVID-19 in Israel

Jean Shaoul

The direct result of the back-to-work policy dictated by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud-Blue and White coalition government is a renewed rise in the number of new COVID-19 cases in Israel, the occupied West Bank and Gaza.

As of July 3, Israel had recorded 28,055 cases and 326 deaths, with an additional 1,008 new cases. The number of new cases has doubled every 12 days over the last month and now averages more than 500 a day. While the number being ventilated is stable, at around 30, this is because hospitals are deferring ventilation to a later stage of the disease, if at all, due to fears of long-term damage. Likewise, the number of seriously ill, which has risen to more than 40, is still relatively low because it takes about two weeks after the detection of new cases to reach this level of severity.

The rise in new cases has led to the closure of many schools throughout the country, and the re-imposition of restrictions in certain areas, including limits on the number of people at concerts, events, weddings and funerals.

The government has brought back the rule requiring Palestinians, who cross the border into Israel to work predominantly in the construction industry, not to go home to their families at the end of their working day. Instead, they must remain in Israel until July 17, in accommodation provided by their employers.

The government is also introducing legislation allowing Israel’s security agency, the Shin Bet, to continue using a surveillance system originally developed for monitoring the Palestinians, in a bid to curb the spread of the disease, despite widespread criticism.

In late April, as the infection rate began to fall, reaching just a few dozen new cases a day—and the cost of the closures reached $285 million a day—the government announced a relaxation of restrictions. This allowed the reopening of schools and a return to work, and later, the reopening of restaurants, bars, clubs, swimming pools and hotels.

Netanyahu has failed to put in place any measures to guard against or deal with a second wave. This was despite recommendations from a team of experts, headed by Professor Eli Waxman from the Weizman Institute of Science in Rehovot, that advises the National Security Council. It had called for a contact-tracing body, a national information centre on the COVID-19 crisis and a unit within the Ministry of Health to tackle emergency situations. His team also recommended that the government reconsider its decision to restart the economy if the daily number of infections rose above 200, far lower than the current rate.

Waxman blamed the increase in cases on the speedy and uncontrolled reopening of schools and the economy and the government’s failure to implement his team’s recommendations. He said, “In another three weeks, we are liable to reach a thousand new infections a day. And even if a small percentage of them turn serious, an overload will gradually be inflicted on the hospitals.”

The social and economic impact of the pandemic has been devastating for Israeli workers and their families. While around 400,000 workers have returned to their jobs, more than 861,000 are unemployed, 21 percent of the workforce, compared with 27 percent at the height of the lockdown and just 3.5 percent in February. This figure does not include people above the legal retirement age, who do not normally qualify for unemployment benefits but have been receiving special grants during the pandemic.

The government’s emergency unemployment support for 262,000 workers is set to expire at the end of August. This will leave hundreds of thousands without a financial safety net amid one of the worst unemployment crises Israel has ever seen, even as it announces an additional $580 million aid package for small and medium-sized businesses. The poorest Israeli households will find themselves in dire straits, with no income, no government support and nowhere to turn for help.

According to a government survey, job vacancies are at an all-time low, with just 42,000 vacancies in May, as the demand for workers fell by 55 percent in telecoms and 64 percent in retail. One-fifth of businesses expect their income to fall by half, while retail businesses, which have furloughed more than 46,000 workers, reported that they are likely to reemploy only 34 percent in the best-case scenario and just 10 percent in the worst-case scenario.

The Palestinian territories of the West Bank, East Jerusalem and Gaza have recorded more than 2,100 coronavirus cases, with 258 new cases in the previous 24 hours, and a total of 11 deaths. Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas has ordered a full lockdown throughout the West Bank for five days.

Anger is mounting against the Netanyahu government on several fronts. Last week, thousands of workers in the travel industry, one of the country’s major employers, rallied outside the Finance Ministry in Jerusalem demanding grants and aid for the sector.

El Al, Israel’s largest airline, already struggling before the pandemic, has suspended all flights as pilots refused to operate the few flights set for Wednesday, and ordered all flights, even those in transit, to return to Tel Aviv’s international airport. The airline reportedly told pilots that if they refused to fly, they would be transferred to other active positions in the company, although many would be furloughed. It has already put 80 percent of its 6,303 workers on unpaid leave, cut management salaries by 20 percent, stopped all investment and purchases, including a signed agreement for new planes.

According to pilots’ representative Nir Reveni, El Al had failed to abide by agreements made with pilots during the coronavirus pandemic and was holding out for a bigger bailout from the government. This package would dilute the main shareholder’s stake from 63 percent to 15 percent and slash one-third of the workforce in the name of efficiency savings.

Teachers, furious at government plans to extend the academic year for secondary school students at their expense to make up for students’ lost education, had threatened strike action that was only averted by a court ruling outlawing the government’s proposals.

While 100,000 government employees have returned to work, the Ministry of Finance has announced drastic cuts in spending, including slashing both wages and jobs, leading the union to declare a labour dispute. The intention of the government workers’ union is not to defend jobs but defend its place at the negotiating table and present its own plans on how to cut costs.

Ariel Ya’akobi, chair of the union, made this very clear, saying, “Usually, when they want to cut wages or fire workers, they approach the union saying that the government is in financial difficulty. Whenever the government is in difficulty, we’re always there to help, and we find a way to solve the problem with as little harm to workers as possible. But this time, the government has already decided how much and where they’re going to cut expenses.”

Netanyahu has caused immense anger, expanding the cabinet to buy off his political supporters and demanding the Knesset approve retrospective tax benefits for him even as he faces charges of bribery, fraud and breach of trust in three separate cases. Blue and White leader Benny Gantz, who now holds the specially created position of deputy prime minister, is seeking an official residence and other trappings of office at public expense.

Israeli and Palestinian workers and youth have joined in the international protests against the police murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis in May. They voiced their opposition to the brutality of Israeli police towards the most impoverished layers—Ethiopian, Jews of Arab and North African descent, migrant workers, Israel’s own Palestinian citizens, Bedouins, or the Palestinians in the Occupied Territories—and the persistent refusal of politicians and the authorities to end racism and improve conditions in the wake of similar protests.

Not least, there have been protests against Netanyahu’s deeply controversial and illegal proposal to annex the settlements and the Jordan Valley in the occupied West Bank, which appears to have been put on hold pending approval—with some cosmetic concessions—from the Trump administration.

UK pubs reopen in “Super Saturday”: A criminal act

Thomas Scripps

Pubs, restaurants and hotels in the UK will open their doors to the public today for the first time since March, alongside cinemas, museums, hairdressers, outdoor gyms, playgrounds, theme parks and arcades.

This is just four days after a local lockdown was imposed in the city of Leicester, amid reports of coronavirus hotspots mushrooming across the country. Cases of the virus have begun to increase again in at least 36 different areas, including 15 London boroughs.

Scene outside the normally busy Leicester Market area during lockdown on Friday

The government’s Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (SAGE), admitted yesterday that the “R” (Reproduction) rate of the virus could now be at 1 or higher in all but two UK regions—in London, the Midlands, the North East and Yorkshire, the South East and the South West. In London, the R rate has risen from between 0.7–0.9 to 0.8–1.1. A rate of 1 or above means that the virus is increasing again.

Today has been marketed by the Johnson Conservative government and the media as “Super Saturday.” Its deadly consequences will be revealed in the weeks and months to come.

Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s call to the nation yesterday to act “safely and sensibly” was naked hypocrisy, a transparent attempt to absolve the government of responsibility for the policy of ending the lockdown and reopening the economy it has been pursuing for the last two weeks. On June 23, Johnson announced the reopening in Parliament with the declaration, “Our long national hibernation is beginning to come to an end.”

Johnson said later that day, “I think it’s great to see people out shopping again and frankly I can’t wait to go to a pub or a restaurant …” This Thursday, the Treasury tweeted, “Grab a pint and raise a glass, pubs are reopening their doors from 4 July. #OpenForBusiness.”

The relentless propaganda for a party atmosphere brought warnings from health care chiefs and even the police. Chair of the Police Federation John Apter said, “The announcement of this easing of lockdown has been done in such a way that a head of steam will be gathering between now and 4 July, which could be seen by some as a countdown to party time.”

Dr. James Crosbie, National Health Service (NHS) clinical lead for alcohol in the North East of England, said, “The NHS is not in the same place as it was prior to lockdown. COVID-19 precautions mean capacity in the system is reduced at a time when we need to be prepared to both deal with any new cases of the virus and also plan to reduce the backlog of routine cases that have built up.”

Despite the government’s efforts, most people remain highly conscious of the threat posed by the virus. A YouGov survey this week found that 70 percent of people would be nervous about going to the pub or cinema. Sixty percent said they would not go to shopping centres and restaurants. But Johnson is hoping to cynically manipulate the frustrations of a minority—in the interests of multibillion-pound hospitality businesses but more fundamentally the wider return to factories and workplaces.

The government is opening key centres of virus transmission while the UK is still in the middle of the pandemic. In the absence of mass systematic testing, the national lockdown was the only basis for suppressing the virus and this is being dismantled.

Three weeks after reopening nonessential shops and five weeks after partially reopening schools, Leicester became the first UK city to be placed under a local lockdown for an additional fortnight, after recording 944 cases in just two weeks from mid-June—one in 10 of the UK’s reported cases last week.

Independent SAGE member and virologist Deenan Pillay commented, “I am expecting there to be a number of Leicesters. The base level of infections going on in the UK is still much higher than it was in other countries in Europe when they started to release their lockdowns.” Independent SAGE is a group of eminent scientists critical of the government’s handling of the lockdown.

Johnson’s government, with the backing of the Labour Party, has created the conditions for a resurgence of the pandemic. Leicester, run by a Labour council, is a case study in the consequences of their criminal policies. According to Public Health England (PHE), there has been a significant increase in infected people aged under 19, from 5 percent of all cases in May to 15 percent in June, and similar among working-age people. The unsafe reopening of schools and nonenforcement of public health measures in workplaces is to blame.

In the week beginning June 8, two schools in the city, Humberstone Infants School and Humberstone Junior School, were forced to close “for the foreseeable future” after several teachers tested positive for coronavirus. They were joined two weeks later by Moat Community College, Herrick Primary and Whitehall Primary.

There have been outbreaks at the Samworth Brothers Bradgate Bakery, the Pladis biscuit factory in South Wigston, the Ethically Sourced Products clothes factory and other textile plants. Twenty-eight workers at crisp producer Walkers’s Beaumont Leys site—employing 1,400—have been infected, with the company admitting to a “steady increase” in cases throughout June. Young men working in the food processing and garment industries were found by a PHE investigating team to be major vectors of transmission in the recent surge.

Last week, campaign group Labour Behind the Label released a report documenting a “shameful” disregard for safety in multiple garment factories across Leicester. The document highlighted instances of nonexistent social distancing, and workers forced to come in after testing positive for coronavirus. One factory of 80 workers had 15 people sick with COVID-19 and working.

These factories are notorious for their criminal exploitation of mostly immigrant labour. Last year, an investigation by the parliamentary environmental audit committee found it was an “open secret” that many of the 1,000 or so factories and workshops in the city were paying below the minimum wage—sometimes as little as £3 an hour. Many remained open after the lockdown formally closing nonessential businesses was implemented. The owner of one garment factory told the Daily Mail, “[W]e lost so much money during the first lockdown that we cannot afford to close … So, we will remain open, regardless of what the authorities tell us.”

Leicester’s sweatshops are an egregious example of a process underway across the whole country. PHE stated Thursday that reports of workplace outbreaks of COVID-19 symptoms doubled last week compared to the week before and increased fivefold between May and June. This takes place with the complicity of the trade unions who have kept virus outbreaks hidden from workers and demobilised struggles for safe conditions.

Virus hotspots are emerging across much of northern England and in areas of Wales, closely connected with outbreaks in the food processing industry. According to government data, Leicester saw 140 new infections per 100,000 people in the week to June 21—more than 10 times the UK-wide average. Other large population centres—Bradford, Barnsley, Rochdale and Bedford—had rates of between 40 and 70 new cases per 100,000 per week. In Wales, Merthyr Tydfil—where the Kepal meat plant reported 130 coronavirus cases—had a rate of 177 and Wrexham—where the Rowan Foods meat plant is based—had 75 in the week ending June 29.

The reopening of pubs, restaurants, cinemas, etc., will swell this renewed wave. It gives renewed urgency to the Socialist Equality Party’s call for rank-and-file safety committees in every workplace, independent of the unions, to safeguard workers’ lives and those of their families and communities.

Trump administration gives private equity firms access to 401(k) retirement funds

Gabriel Black

In June, the US Labor Department announced that it would allow 401(k) retirement funds to invest in private equity firms.

Private equity companies are financial firms, in many cases tied to a parent bank or other larger financial institution, that are unregulated. They serve as vehicles for speculative activities, often high-risk bets that promise a high return. They are a part of the so-called shadow banking system that has seen an explosive growth over the last 20 years.

Unlike pensions—so-called “defined benefit” plans that guarantee a set monthly income for retirees—401(k)s, “defined contribution” plans, are subject to the vagaries of the stock and bond markets, as are the benefits they yield to workers who pay into them. Opening up the $7.9 trillion in 401(k) assets to private equity funds increases the risk to workers that their retirement savings will be gutted or wiped out by a new financial crisis.

Private equity firms are heavily engaged in takeovers of companies, usually employing borrowed money and often carried out in opposition to the management of the targeted firms. Having acquired a company, the private equity firm as a rule loads it up with debt, extracts huge fees for the private equity owners, slashes jobs and wages, and then resells the zombie firm for a profit.

One example is Bain Capital, previously run by Republican senator and 2012 presidential candidate Mitt Romney. Bain has relied on leveraged buyouts to amass its $105 billion portfolio. Bain, however, is only the fifth largest private equity firm. Other examples include the Brazilian-American firm 3G Capital, which took over Burger King in 2010 and Tim Hortons in 2014, restructuring and merging both.

Private equity firms are heavily invested in start-up firms. SoftBank, the massive Japanese investment bank, has a private equity wing called the SoftBank Vision Fund, with over $100 billion of capital. SoftBank has invested in major tech-related start-ups such as Uber and WeWork.

The Labor Department’s decision to allow 401(k)s to invest in these markets was the result of an executive order, the “Regulatory Relief to Support Economic Recovery Executive Order 13924,” issued by Trump on May 19.

Trump’s order essentially instructed federal agencies, including the Labor Department, the Department of Health and Human Services and the Environmental Protection Agency, to loosen regulatory standards so as to promote “economic growth,” i.e., corporate profits.

According to Lexology, a leading corporate legal news processor, the executive order “calls on agencies to provide or extend regulatory flexibilities that promote job creation and economic growth, and provide regulatory relief to businesses as they work to recover from the impact of the coronavirus.”

Lexology continues: “[T]hese directives provide important opportunities for businesses to engage with the regulatory agencies and help shape deregulatory activity and enforcement policy for the near future.”

Up to now, 401(k)s have been prohibited from investing in private equity firms and their activities because of the risk to the workers whose retirement will depend on their 401(k) benefits.

Among other things, Trump’s executive order allows federal agencies to engage in so-called “pre-enforcement rulings” in relation to corporate offenders. That is, if a company or financial institution is caught violating a federal regulation, it can negotiate a deal with the government before legal action is initiated. According to Lexology, this greatly reduces “enforcement risk,” i.e., it reduces or eliminates penalties for violations of labor and environmental regulations.

Investopedia reports that several financial advisors have expressed their opposition to the opening up of private equity firms to 401(k)s. They cite Robert Johnson, a professor of finance at Creighton University, who says that “it’s a mistake to give 401(k) investors access to private equity through their plans.” He adds, “Private equity structures are complex and opaque to the average investor.”

The Labor Department’s decision is a huge boon to private equity firms, which will now have access to the massive pool of assets held by 401(k) funds, which are overseen by asset management firms such as Vanguard and Fidelity.

The timing is no accident. Last year, before the pandemic, the Financial Times titled an article “The private equity bubble is bound to burst.” McKinsey estimated the same year that the private equity markets, pumped up with cheap credit and filled with money from investors seeking the highest returns, had ballooned to $5.8 trillion, more than the gross domestic product of Japan, the third largest economy in the world. Forbes published an article headlined “Private Equity Will Lead the Next Meltdown,” which called attention to the massive and unsustainable buildup of debt in these markets.

Now, amidst the most severe economic downturn since the Great Depression, the Trump administration is opening up private equity to retirement investments as a means of keeping these financial markets filled with cash. This should be viewed in conjunction with the CARES Act bailout of Wall Street, which handed trillions of dollars to major American corporations, as well as the unprecedented injection of trillions of dollars into the bond markets through the Federal Reserve.

The loosening of regulatory restrictions on financial players and investors, including allowing private equity firms access to 401(k)s, will open the door to even greater financial trickery and crime.

Who will pay when the highly indebted private equity world of start-ups goes bust? The answer is the workers who are invested in 401(k)s that are tied into these parasitic speculative operations.

Already, before the pandemic, a survey by Bankrate of American adults found that one in five people had nothing saved for retirement or emergencies. Less than a third of Americans have saved 11 percent or more of their annual income.

A 2018 article by the Wall Street Journal, “A Generation of Americans is Entering Old Age the Least Prepared in Decades,” found that high average debt in things like children’s education, unpaid mortgages and parents’ old age meant that Americans reaching retirement age were less prepared than they had been since the 1940s.

In 1979, 38 percent of private employees had a traditional pension. In 2016, just 13 percent of these workers had one. The average household in 2013, whose head was 55 to 64 years old, had a retirement fund of just $14,500, according to the Journal. That is barely enough to live for a few months in most major cities.

It is amid this disastrous situation facing retirees that the Trump administration has further eroded their economic security by plugging their 401(k)s into private equity, which will plunder workers’ already inadequate savings to increase profits and stave off insolvency.

French unions collaborate with employers to impose mass layoffs as COVID-19 crisis deepens

Will Morrow

As the international wave of layoffs, wage-cutting and plant closures triggered by the coronavirus pandemic begins in France, the French trade unions are working closely with the Macron government and employers to suppress workers’ opposition to this assault.

On Thursday, Airbus management met with the main national unions to discuss their plans to lay off 5,000 employees nationally. This is part of a global restructuring that will destroy 15,000 jobs, including 5,100 in Germany and 1,700 in Britain.

Of the 5,000 job cuts in France, 3,500 will come from Toulouse, where Airbus operates five separate assembly lines for five major airplane models. They include 2,398 assembly-line and 900 white-collar positions. Another 484 positions will be cut at the Nantes factory which manufactures the central structural area of all Airbus planes, and another 386 at the Saint-Nazaire fuselage assembly.

It is already clear that layoffs will have a devastating flow-on impact on entire regions. According to the Occitanie Chamber of Commerce and Industry, 85,000 jobs and 800 companies depend upon the airplane manufacturing industry in Occitanie, which includes Toulouse, with estimates of up to 40,000 jobs immediately threatened. This month, Scalian, one subcontractor, announced plans to lay off 140 of its 225 employees.

Airbus has predicted that demand will not return to pre-2020 levels for three to five years.

The trade unions responded to Airbus’ announcement with empty hand-wringing: describing it as “cataclysmic” and “catastrophic” for workers, while making clear that they would do nothing to oppose it. Dominique Delbouis, the Airbus coordinator of Workers Force (FO), announced that “for FO, the red line is to reduce this number, which appears to us to be excessive.” He called to prevent all “forced layoffs.”

This only means achieving the layoffs by other means, including so-called “voluntary redundancies,” in which workers are harassed and pressured into leaving their job, under conditions of a general downturn in which they would likely not find another job for years.

To the extent that Delbouis had any criticism, it was from the nationalist and corporatist standpoint of Airbus itself, warning that Airbus “must have enough resources available to bounce back once the crisis has passed. And it has all the more chance of bouncing back given that it is alone in the world, with Boeing down for the count and the Chinese not yet on the market.”

Jean-François Knepper of FO added that the “natural attrition in the group is 6,000 jobs per year globally,” and called for slowing the restructuring over two years to achieve it via “natural erosion.”

In other words, the unions support the framework of mass job cuts in the midst of the pandemic to boost Airbus’ global competitiveness, and the ensuing social devastation that will be wrought on working-class communities. Their aim is to achieve this while preventing an explosion of opposition among their members. To that end, there will be four months of closed-door negotiations on the latest restructuring plan.

An identical role is being played by the trade unions in other European countries. In the UK, a report published by the New Economics Foundation, in consultation with the national Trades Union Congress, revealed that the Unite trade union has already agreed to a “redundancy cap” of 10 percent of all positions in the aviation industry, equivalent to tens of thousands of jobs.

In Germany, Verdi and other trade unions have called demonstrations in support of a government bailout package of €9 billion for Lufthansa that is tied to the destruction of 22,000 jobs and cuts to conditions.

But the unions’ role in imposing mass layoffs extends far beyond the airline industry. A report published today by Le Monde points to the scale of the social catastrophe that is underway in the clothing retail sector. Procos, an industry federation for specialized commerce, including restaurants, retail and other small trading, has warned that anywhere from 150,000 to 300,000 jobs are threatened.

These jobs have little to no protections, are low-wage, and many of those who lose their position will be unable to find any work. According to a study conducted by the General Federation of Labour (CGT) union, of the 2,100 retail employees laid off by La Halle between 2015-2017, between 35-40 percent had still not found a job as of February.

Dozens of fashion brands have already gone into receivership and will either be repurchased with stores closed and staff laid off or will shut down entirely. These include Camaïeu (3,300 employees), La Halle (5,809 employees), André, Celio, Demart, and Devianne, which together employ more than 16,000 across the country.

A key mechanism for implementing the layoffs is the so-called Collective Conventional Rupture (RCC), created by Macron, in the Labour Law in 2017. This law integrated the trade unions even more closely alongside the government and corporations in employer restructurings. Unlike previously, it allowed companies to carry out mass job cuts without even the routine of claiming financial necessity. Instead, all that was required was a signature of approval from the trade unions covering a majority of the workforce, as well as the labour ministry.

The unions have already signed off on numerous RCCs in the last month. Last week, Sanofi, the pharmaceutical giant, announced that it will cut 1,700 jobs across Europe, including between 750 and 1,060 in France, which it intends to achieve by two RCC agreements. On Wednesday, the national pilots association announced that its leadership had agreed to an RCC with Air France that will cut more than 400 pilots’ jobs by the end of the year.

Southeastern US continues to mark substantial rise in coronavirus cases

Cordell Gascoigne

Over the past week, the United States has been ravaged by coronavirus as a result of Democratic and Republican governors pushing forward with the full reopening of the economy which has been encouraged by President Donald Trump.

Particularly in the southeastern United States, the largest meat producers in the country—Butterball in Garner, North Carolina; Wayne Farms in Oakwood, Georgia; and the titan Tyson Food Inc. in Springdale, Arkansas—have operated as vectors for the virulent disease, as exhibited by the high rate of meat industry workers in the US and internationally who have been exposed to and afflicted by COVID-19.

Over the past week, Arkansas has seen an increase of more than 5,000 cases, bringing the current total to 22,622 cases and 281 deaths. The state government reported 878 new coronavirus cases on Thursday, the most the state has seen in a single day since the beginning of the pandemic. The state reported more than 7,000 tests had been administered and conducted over the past 24 hours.

Dismissing the record high total, Republican Gov. Asa Hutchinson boasted that the state had seen a decline in cases for a few days prior to Thursday, which more than doubled Wednesday’s new case count.

The state of Louisiana over the course of seven days saw an increase of over 10,000 cases, bring its total confirmed infections to 63,289 and 3,283 deaths. The limited measures and “precautions” taken by the state during Phase Two of its economic reopening exposes the criminal character of policies which are aimed at forcing workers back to work at all costs, including their lives.

The Louisiana Department of Health reported in its daily update that there were 1,728 cases and an additional 21 deaths Friday. There were an additional 15,286 tests administered and reported to Louisiana state government on Thursday, which found 9.05 percent positive for coronavirus. Over the past week, the positive rate was 7.63 percent; during Phase One, the average was recorded at 4.78 percent.

Mississippi’s recorded cases have increased by more than 6,000 from last week’s 22,287 to the current 28,770 with deaths having increased by 114 from 978 to 1,092. The state reported nine deaths on Wednesday and set a new high in patients hospitalized with confirmed or suspected COVID-19 cases at 786, of which 579 of were confirmed cases.

From last week’s 30,444 confirmed coronavirus cases and 841 deaths in Alabama, the current total is 38,962 cases and 972 deaths. July 2 presented, as the trend continues, another record in the coronavirus pandemic with the Alabama Department of Public Health’s report of 1,162 cases of COVID-19 overnight, the state’s highest single day total to date. Furthermore, the state’s hospitals are reporting their third consecutive day of record numbers with 797 inpatients being treated for the respiratory disease while hundreds more are hospitalized awaiting test results—since the state’s first case was confirmed in mid-March, 2,835 people have required hospitalization.

With coronavirus on the rise and record numbers reflecting that, a decision by Republican Gov. Kay Ivey on Monday extended the state’s Safer-at-Home order to July 31. In the Montgomery County, 36 new cases were recorded overnight, bringing its total to 3,875; while Jefferson County reported 145, rapidly becoming the county with the most cases, raising it to 4,532. Mobile County reported an additional 100 cases, rising to 3,797. Half of Montgomery County’s deaths have taken place in June, and 10 of its 102 deaths have occurred in the last week.

As of July 2, the Tennessee Department of Health has reported 46,520 confirmed cases of coronavirus and 370 probable cases of the disease, an increase of 1,575 total cases since July 1. The state’s health department also announced 594 confirmed deaths, 2,775 hospitalizations, and 28,938 recoveries with more than 838,000 coronavirus tests having been administered. Among significant counties, Carter has 56 cases, 1 death, and 41 recoveries; Greene, 86 cases, 2 deaths and 58 recoveries; Hawkins, 55 cases, 2 deaths, and 40 recoveries; Johnson, 38 cases, 0 deaths, and 25 recoveries; Sullivan, 101 cases, 2 deaths, 76 recoveries; Unicoi, 55 cases, 0 deaths, and 52 recoveries; Washington, 135 cases, 0 deaths, and 106 recoveries.

In Georgia, the previous week’s number of cases numbered 71,095, which increased to 87,709 and 2,779 deaths. The DeKalb County Board of Health confirmed its COVID-19 call center and testing sites will close June 3, despite the harrowing surging of cases, and not resume operations until Monday, June 6, claiming the decision was “in line with other health districts in metro Atlanta and in other parts of the state.” As with other states in the southeast, another record was set in the state on July 2 as confirmed coronavirus cases rose by nearly 3,500. Hospitalizations have also increased by 225 with 32 more patients in the Intensive Care Unit (ICU) in less than 24 hours, bringing the total, according to the Georgia Department of Public Health (GDPH), to 11,500 in the hospital and 2,389 in ICU.

With cases surging in the auto and meatpacking plants, a manager at Macon Beer Company confirmed they shut down production due to the spike of COVID-19, with doors closed on July 1 until further notice. In addition, restaurants in Macon are following the Beer Company’s path as cases in Baldwin and Bibb counties continue to rise.

Florida on July 2 reported 10,109 new cases of COVID-19, continuing its breaking of records in single-day reported cases, with 6,563 cases on Wednesday, July 1. There were an additional 68 deaths bringing the total to 3,718. Florida has nearly 170,000 confirmed cases of coronavirus. For 25 consecutive days, Florida has set a record high in its weekly rolling average. Georgia, one of the first states to loosen restrictions, joined Florida and several other states in setting single-day records of new cases. Georgia reported 3,472, up from 2,976 on Wednesday, July 1.

Also on July 1, Miami-Dade County’s confirmed cases increased by 2,304 to 40,265, in which the county had 1,018 deaths, the highest total in the state. Broward County’s cases increased by 531 to 17,116, bringing the county’s death toll to 394; Monroe County recently listed with 296 cases with a one-day increase of 26 and 5 deaths; and Palm Beach County’s cases increased by 412 to 14,859, with a death toll of 523. In total, Florida has confirmed at least 15,150 coronavirus-related hospitalizations since the beginning of the pandemic.

While more than 70,000 people in North Carolina have been confirmed positive for the disease, the actual number of people who have contracted the virus statewide is, according to researchers from North Carolina State University and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, closer to a staggering half million. The researchers have estimated around 5 percent of the state’s population, more than 480,000, are infected with the relatively low official numbers indicative of the state’s lack of testing.

The South Carolina Department of Health and Environmental Control announced Friday that there have been 1,831 new confirmed cases and 9 additional confirmed deaths bringing the total number of confirmed coronavirus cases to 41,532 and confirmed deaths from COVID-19 to 793. There are currently 1,125 hospital beds throughout the state occupied by patients who have either tested positive or are under investigation for the disease.

As of Friday, a total of 450,432 tests have been conducted in the state, placing South Carolina in the lowest tier of states for per capita testing.