News: The new Covid-19 wave hits hospitals

Wednesday, November 11, 2020

The new Covid-19 wave hits hospitals

Many hospitals in the US are near capacity once again; democracy in Hong Kong faces a new crisis.

Tonight's Sentences was written by Benjamin Rosenberg.

TOP NEWS

US hospitalizations reach record levels as ICU beds dwindle

Drew Angerer/Getty Images

More than 60,000 Americans were in the hospital with Covid-19 on Tuesday, the highest number at any point during the pandemic. According to the Covid Tracking Project, the US is averaging between 1,600 and 1,700 new hospitalizations per day. [CNN / Steve Almasy, Christina Maxouris, and Jason Hanna]
Cases are rising nearly everywhere in the country, but especially in the central US. Illinois, Wisconsin, and Texas all set single-day new case records Tuesday. In the last week alone, one in every 433 Americans tested positive for the virus. [AP / Mike Stobbe]
Big urban centers may be better positioned to handle an influx of hospital patients — New York City more than doubled its hospital bed capacity when it was the epicenter of the outbreak in the spring. But rural areas, where cases are especially surging now, are less equipped to do so. [NPR / Will Stone]
The worst outbreaks this fall have come in North and South Dakota. North Dakota's hospitals are full, so its governor is letting health care workers continue working even if they test positive for Covid-19, and South Dakota has a positivity rate of an incredible 54 percent. [Vox / German Lopez]
Texas this week became the first state to surpass 1 million cumulative cases, and California is coming close. California Gov. Gavin Newsom blamed small, maskless gatherings outside of individual households. [CNN / Christina Maxouris and Eric Levenson]
Neither Dakota has implemented a statewide mask mandate, and neither have several other states with high rates of new cases. In Kansas, where a mask mandate was selectively enforced, counties which enforced it saw far fewer new cases in the months that followed. [Vox / Lois Parshley and Youyou Zhou]
President-elect Joe Biden wants mask-wearing outdoors to be mandatory nationwide, but such a mandate will be hard to enforce. Instead of issuing an executive order, Biden plans to ask governors, mayors, and city councils to enact mandates. [USA Today / Grace Hauck]
Boosting testing and contact tracing efforts are also key components of Biden's plan, but none are very likely to happen at a federal level until he takes office on January 20 of next year. Between now and then, Covid-19 cases, hospitalizations, and deaths are expected to keep rising as schools continue to reopen and families come together for the holidays. [Vox / German Lopez]

Hong Kong's pro-democracy lawmakers forced to resign

The Chinese government on Wednesday forced four pro-democracy lawmakers in Hong Kong to resign, leading the rest of the opposition to vow to step down as well. The US has protested China's imposition in Hong Kong's affairs, but it has been distracted by its own elections. [NYT / Austin Ramzy, Tiffany May, and Elaine Yu]
The pro-democracy opposition resigned in protest when Beijing expelled the initial four lawmakers. This came shortly after China passed a resolution giving its authorities in Hong Kong broad new powers to root out dissent against the Communist Party. [CNN / Helen Regan, Ben Westcott, and Jadyn Sham]
Hong Kong is a former British colony, but since 1997, it has operated semi-independently from China — the language written into its constitution is "one country, two systems." Wednesday's events leave its legislature entirely composed of pro-Beijing lawmakers. [AP / Zen Soo]
The "one country, two systems" arrangement is supposed to be in place for 50 years, until 2047. But critics of Beijing's recent actions say the Chinese government is pulling back from that agreement, attempting to take full control of Hong Kong. [ABC News / Britt Clennett and Karson Yiu]
Wu Chi-Wai, chair of Hong Kong's Democratic Party, announced the resignations, saying, "all the power will be centralized in the chief executive — a puppet of the central government. So today is the end of 'one country, two systems.'" [NPR / Emily Feng and Scott Neuman]
China's actions spurred concern among Western democracies. British foreign minister Dominic Raab issued a statement saying the expulsion of the four legislators was an assault on Hong Kong's freedoms guaranteed in the 1997 arrangement. [Reuters / Jessie Pang and Sharon Tam]

MISCELLANEOUS

Nearly $14 billion was spent on the 2020 elections, roughly twice as much as any previous election cycle. Democratic candidates and groups spent $6.9 billion, with Republicans spending $3.8 billion.

[Open Secrets]

The Covid-19 pandemic has caused a cemetery crisis in Iran, where a massive graveyard on the outskirts of the capital city of Tehran has struggled to keep up with the mounting death toll from the virus. [AP / Mohammad Nasiri]
Thousands of refugees from Ethiopia are pouring into Sudan as tensions escalate in Ethiopia between the federal government and the Tigray region. The border is officially closed, but the governor of the Sudanese state of Kassala has offered the refugees amnesty. [CNN / Bethlehem Feleke and Eoin McSweeney]
Holding a college football season in a pandemic is not going particularly well. Four games in the Southeastern Conference and one in the Big Ten have been canceled this weekend. [CBS Sports / Dennis Dodd]

VERBATIM

"The decision ... signifies that the Chinese Communist Party is willing to break laws and rules to eradicate the opposition. In doing so, the dictatorship will lose all the trust that is left of the Hong Kongers and the international community that there's rule of law in Hong Kong."

[Fernando Cheung, pro-democracy legislator in Hong Kong]