The 18 states listed in the document are Alabama, Arkansas, Arizona, California, Florida, Georgia, Iowa, Idaho, Kansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, Nevada, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas and Utah. For the state to be considered a coronavirus red zone, they need to have had more than 100 new COVID-19 cases per 100,000 residents in the previous week.
The report also says that 11 more states can qualify to be in the red zone because more than 10 percent of coronavirus cases administered in the past seven days came back positive. These states are Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, Nevada, South Carolina, Texas and Washington. Ten out of these 11 states already qualify to be red zones due to their high number of cases, with the exception of Washington state.
Listen to this episode of the Health Ranger Report, a podcast by Mike Adams, the Health Ranger, as he talks about how the American people will likely not be able to survive a second round of lockdowns brought about by a second wave of coronavirus infections – which is exactly why the Democratic Party is aggressively pushing for lockdowns to be reimposed.
Task force's recommendations include imposing mask mandates
The main recommendations this task force's document are giving for these red zones include issuing city or county mask mandates, limiting restaurant and gym occupancy to just 50 percent of their full capacity and to enforce a lockdown of all economic activity in counties where the positive test rate is above 10 percent on a seven-day average.
They are also recommending that visits to long-term care facilities such as nursing homes should be limited, that employees of long-term care facilities should wear face coverings at all times and that workers be tested for COVID-19 every day.
The task force's document specifically highlights Georgia's situation and recommends that Gov. Brian Kemp, a Republican, “mandate a statewide wearing of cloth face coverings outside the home.” However, before the document leaked the governor just signed an executive order rolling back locally-enacted mask mandates in his state.
In Florida, which is now considered to be the epicenter for the coronavirus in the United States, Gov. Ron DeSantis, another Republican, has taken a similar stance, saying repeatedly that he will not issue a statewide mask mandate. He also said that he will not reimpose a lockdown of the state, despite the fact that he ordered bars to shut down in late June when the state's COVID-19 cases began rising again.
The task force's recommendations are in line with what many health experts, including Anthony Fauci and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) have repeatedly suggested that states implement. (Related: CDC will no longer control coronavirus data; hospitals to report directly to Washington.)
However, these recommendations might be ignored as both President Donald Trump and many governors whose states are considered red zones are showing that they have no interest in shutting down parts of the country's economy once more.
Read about the ways states are trying to stop the coronavirus from spreading at Pandemic.news.
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