Coronavirus: Infected hospital staff continue to treat patients in North Dakota

North Dakota’s governor is allowing hospitals to use workers infected with coronavirus to treat Covid-19 patients.

Low-security prisoners unload bodies at a temporary morgue in a carpark in El Paso, Texas, on Tuesday. Picture: AFP

In North Dakota health resources are so overstretched that the Governor is allowing hospitals to use workers infected with coronavirus to treat COVID-19 patients.

In Philadelphia the authorities are preparing to ban all indoor gatherings indefinitely to stop the spread of the pandemic in America’s sixth-largest city.

In New Mexico the Governor late on Monday ordered residents to stay at home for a fortnight because the state was facing a “life-or-death situation”.

And in Texas low-security prisoners are working at morgues.

Across almost the entire US, coronavirus is spreading with unprecedented speed. Forty out of 50 states have reported record increases in cases this month while 20 have tallied a new record increase in deaths.

Overall, there have been more than 11 million cases of coronavirus in the US according to data from the Johns Hopkins University coronavirus tracker, the most reported in any country.

The most recent million cases were tallied in under a week and the country is now registering more than 150,000 new cases a day on average. Deaths are rising too, although not at the same rate. There have been almost 250,000 deaths in the US; nearly 80,000 more than in Brazil, the nation with the second-highest tally.

Hospital admissions from coronavirus hit a new national high on Sunday. The White House has done little to address the nationwide spike in numbers. However, on Sunday, after Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer announced preventive restrictions on businesses and some schools, Scott Atlas, Donald’s Trump’s coronavirus adviser, protested on Twitter, writing: “The only way this stops is if people rise up. You get what you accept.”

Ms Whitmer said the statement was “incredibly reckless”. Anthony Fauci, the country’s most senior infectious diseases official, said he was encouraged by the emergence of two promising vaccines, made by Pfizer and Moderna. He described them as a “really strong step forward to where we want to be about getting control of this outbreak”.

But the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases also warned that the US was still facing a “dark winter”.

North Dakota is facing a bleak scenario after Republican Governor Doug Burgum took a business-friendly approach to the pandemic from the start and resisted imposing regulations.

By last week the state was gripped by one of the worst outbreaks in the country, and hospitals were close to capacity.

On Friday Mr Burgum changed tack and introduced a statewide mask mandate as well as restrictions on businesses and gatherings. He has also stated that healthcare workers who have tested positive for COVID-19 but do not have symptoms should be allowed to stay on at work to ease the stress on hospitals.

Medical workers have expressed concern at the move. “It’s going to make you question every time you want to sit down and grab a five-minute snack with one of your co-workers,” said Adam Johnson, an emergency room nurse in Bismarck who is president of the state’s Emergency Nurses Association.

The Times