Nearly the entire US is a Covid hot spot, a leaked government map reveals.

Yahoo! News obtained an internal 28 November chart from the US departments of homeland security and health which show nearly the entire country blanketed in red, denoting counties which are “sustained hotspots.”

These pandemic zones, which swallow up nearly the entire state in places like Arizona and the hard-hit Midwest, are “communities that have had a high sustained case burden and may be higher risk for experiencing healthcare resource limitations,” according to the chart.

In other words, maxed out hospitals. Not enough staff or beds. California governor Gavin Newsom has warned that the state could be out of ICU beds before Christmas Eve.

Last week, the US hit an unprecedented 200,000 new cases in a single day, while Dr. Anthony Fauci, the nation’s leading infectious disease experts, warned of a “surge upon a surge” following the massive amount of cross-country travel for the Thanksgiving holiday.

Yahoo! acquired another map which showed how many cases each county had per 100,000 people, and revealed that nearly the entire state of Minnesota, as well as large swathes of the Dakotas, New Mexico, Ohio, Illinois, and Wyoming have 500 or more per 100,000, well above the average of 336.

The pandemic is now so diffuse throughout the country experts have a hard time pinpointing exactly what scenarios are driving this most recent surge, though people congregating in long-term care facilities, food processing plants, prisons, health care settings, and restaurants and bars remain a leading driver of coronavirus spread.

Others argue the latest surge is drive in part by small in-person gatherings.  Partially due to loosening state rules, a fatigued population, and cold winter weather, people have been gathering in close quarters, where the disease is more easily spread.

The Independent

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