While several states across America continue to reopen businesses amid an ongoing pandemic, governors of Texas and Florida have ordered bars to remain close by imposing new restrictions. This move comes after the states witness a surge in COVID-19 cases.
The recently imposed restrictions by the close allies of Donald Trump, is a result of the White House ignoring the spikes as hot spots. On June 26, a pair of GOP governors announced new mitigation measures in their states amid alarming numbers of new COVID-19 cases, with both Texas Governor Greg Abbott and Florida Governor Ron DeSantis imposing orders to shutter bars and Texas introducing new restrictions on other businesses the governor said were associated with the virus' rebound, POLITICO reported.
Aside from Texas and Florida, nearly a dozen other states have put a lid on the reopening plans citing a resurgence of the coronavirus across the South and West, affecting nearly half of the states in America. Texas and Florida are the first states to reinstate restrictions as COVID-19 cases shoot up.
Both governors, who are close allies of Trump have faced strong criticism for ignoring calls to keep their states locked down during the early days of the pandemic. They opted only to pause reopening but have also reimposed some earlier restrictions, hinting at the severity of the outbreaks in two of the United States' most populous states.
Earlier this week, America registered another single-day record with over 39,000 new cases. On top of that, hospitalizations have also increased, triggering concerns about the nationwide death toll increasing as well. The surge comes as the White House tried to ignore the increase, justifying it with increased testing capacity and insisting on reopening the economy after remaining stagnant for a long time.
There are signs that the White House has finally started taking the threats more seriously. Keeping in line with that, the coronavirus task force held its first public briefing since April. Aside from that, the president canceled his plan to visit his New Jersey resort for the weekend, without giving any sort of an explanation.
Trump later explained that he wanted to stay in Washington to keep an eye on protesters in the city who were trying to damage its statues. The Department of Health and Human Services also eased up on requests from the states' two GOP senators and Abbott and everted its plan to stop federal funding for a few testing sites in the state at the end of the month.