Pence touts decline in coronavirus hospitalizations despite states seeing increase in patients

"We're seeing a steady decline in hospitalizations and most importantly, a steady decline in fatalities," Pence told CNN's Pittsburgh affiliate WPXI in an interview Friday, arguing that America is "safely reopening."

He described the recent increase in Covid-19 cases in some states as "a reflection of a dramatic increase in testing."

"But we're watching it very closely and we remain very confident that we have the hospital capacity, we have the resources to be able to deal with any specific outbreaks that could occur," Pence told WPXI.

This is not true for North Carolina. The state has not seen a decline in hospitalizations -- 5 out of the 6 days this week North Carolina saw record-high hospitalization numbers.

Coronavirus cases, deaths and hospitalizations in the state continue to trend upward.

“What we’ve seen since the middle of May is a steady increase in the number of patients who were admitted to the hospital with COVID-19," said Dr. Joseph Rogers, chief medical officer for Duke University Health System. "In the middle of May, we had 45 or 46 patients in the hospital, and we’ve seen a near doubling of that as of (Tuesday) morning.”

The vice president's optimism about the government's response to the virus comes as health officials emphasize the importance of face coverings and continued social distancing.

"We know the pandemic is not over," said Dr. Jay Butler, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention deputy director for infectious diseases, during a call with reporters on Friday.

A majority of states that had implemented stay-at-home orders are slowly lifting their restrictions that began in March and allowing more businesses to reopen.

Covid-19 hospitalizations had gone up in at least a dozen states between May 25 and June 9, according to data aggregated by CNN from the Covid Tracking Project.

As of Saturday, new coronavirus cases are trending downward in 21 states, while still increasing in 17 states -- several of which have seen record or near-record highs.

On Friday, for example, North Carolina saw its largest single-day increase in reported cases since the pandemic began.

As of Saturday, nationally more than 2 million people have been infected by the virus and more than 114,000 have died, according to data from Johns Hopkins University.

The CDC projected Friday that the US could suffer 130,560 coronavirus deaths by July 4, with a possible range of 124,260 to 139,880 deaths.

In an interview with CNN on Friday, Dr. Anthony Fauci cautioned states to rethink their reopening strategies if they see increases in the number of people hospitalized with Covid-19.