Florida's Hialeah city at 'breaking point' over virus

A mayor in the US state of Florida warned Monday that his city, Hialeah, is at a "breaking point" due to record surge in coronavirus cases, calling it "scary."

"This is scary, I mean. Now every day is over 10,000 [new cases]," Carlos Hernandez told CNN. "It's almost like the norm. State hospitals are at full capacity. I spoke to two or three large hospitals in our city late last night. Two of them have canceled non-emergency surgeries, and they're really, really at the point -- it's a breaking point."

Stressing the city is at a "critical stage," Hernandez urged Florida Governor Ron DeSantis to issue a statewide mask mandate and implement a united approach to halt the spread of the pandemic.

"You can't fix this by pieces," the mayor said and added: "It's gotta be 'work together,' and that's not happening right now, and that's the biggest problem I see."

Hernandez said has "no idea" why DeSantis is not imposing a statewide mask mandate.

Florida had record high hospitalizations related to coronavirus with its more than 10,000 daily cases over a week. As the third worst-hit state of the US, it has more than 350,000 cases and nearly 5,000 fatalities, according to a running tally of Johns Hopkins University.

New York was the hardest hit by pandemic far below with its nearly 407,000 infections and almost 32,500 deaths. It is followed by California, with nearly 387,000 virus cases and over 7,700 deaths.

Texas and New Jersey have more than 335,200 and nearly 176,800 cases, respectively. Texas recorded more than 4,000 deaths, while New Jersey has over 15,700 fatalities.

The US is the worst-hit country by the pandemic with more than 3.7 million cases and over 140,500 deaths. In all, more than 1.1 million recoveries have been recorded.