Eighteen states are in the “red zone” for COVID-19 cases and should revert back to more stringent lockdown measures, according to a White House document that wasn’t publicly released. The document, obtained by the Center for Public Integrity, was prepared for the White House Coronavirus Task Force and was shared widely within the federal government. However, for unknown reasons, the document wasn’t made available to the public. Ashish Jha, director of the Harvard Global Health Institute, said: “The fact that it’s not public makes no sense to me... Why are we hiding this information from the American people? This should be published and updated every day.” The 18 states are considered to be in the “red zone” because they had more than 100 new cases per 100,000 people last week. They are Alabama, Arkansas, Arizona, California, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Iowa, Kansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, Nevada, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, and Utah.
