Holdout states resist calls for stay-at-home orders.

Iowa college students practiced social distancing on Monday. The state is one of the few that have not implemented strong shutdown measures.Credit...Andy Abeyta/The Gazette, via Associated Press

Around the country, the total number of coronavirus cases spiked sharply as of Friday afternoon, exceeding 275,000 — more than a quarter of a million people worldwide who have been infected.

But even though the U.S. already has at least 7,100 of the world’s nearly 60,000 confirmed deaths, a small number of U.S. governors are resisting increasingly urgent calls to shut down their states.

The pressure on the holdouts in the Midwest and the South has mounted in recent days as fellow governors, public-health experts and even their own citizens urge them to adopt the sort of tougher measures that have been put in place across 41 states and in Washington, D.C.

Health experts warn that the coronavirus can easily exploit any gaps in a state-by-state patchwork of social distancing across the country.

By Friday, nine states had yet to issue formal statewide stay-at-home orders — the most direct and stringent measure available, instructing all residents to stay at home, except for necessities. In some of those states, cities and counties had stepped in to issue their own orders, leaving a patchwork of restrictions.

The contrast is starkest in five states — Arkansas, Iowa, Nebraska, North Dakota and South Dakota — where there are no such orders in place, either in major cities or statewide. Another four had partial restrictions issued locally in certain cities or counties.

Reference: NY Times