Coronavirus Surge in Tulsa ‘More Than Likely’ Linked to Trump Rally

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/08/us/politics/coronavirus-tulsa-trump-rally.html

By Maggie Astor and Noah Weiland
July 8, 2020, 7:27 p.m. ET


A surge in coronavirus cases in and around Tulsa, Okla., is probably connected to the campaign rally President Trump held there last month, the city’s top health official said on Wednesday.

Tulsa County reported 206 new confirmed cases on Tuesday and 261 — a record high — on Monday, and Dr. Bruce Dart, the director of the Tulsa Health Department, said at a news conference that it was reasonable to link the spike to the rally and related events.

“The past two days we’ve had almost 500 cases, and we know we had several large events a little over two weeks ago, which is about right,” Dr. Dart said. “So I guess we just connect the dots.”

The county has more infections right now than any other in Oklahoma, and “we’ve had some significant events in the past few weeks that more than likely contributed to that,” he added.

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A few days before the event, Dr. Dart urged the president to cancel, calling the rally a “perfect storm of potential over-the-top disease transmission.”

When he said that, Tulsa County had just recorded 89 new cases in a day, a record high at the time. This week, the daily totals have been more than twice that.