US COVID CASES TO REACH 100,000 PER DAY – EXPERT

WASHINGTON, D.C.: Dr. Anthony Fauci, the US top infectious-diseases expert, warned Tuesday (Wednesday in Manila) that Covid-19 cases in the United States could go up to 100,000 per day if the current trend “does not turn around.”

In a Senate committee hearing, Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said that the country is “going in the wrong direction” as the number of Covid-19 cases increases across the nation.

“We are now having 40- plus thousand new cases a day. I would not be surprised if we go up to 100,000 a day if this does not turn around. And so I am very concerned,” he said.

Fauci stressed that he could not make an estimation on deaths as those would need to be modeled.

The outbreaks in various parts of the country put “the entire country at risk” and “clearly we don’t have this under control,” Fauci added.

In related news, more than 2.6 million Covid-19 cases have been reported in the United States with the fatalities surpassing 126,000 as of Tuesday afternoon, according to a tally by Johns Hopkins University.

The number of Covid-19 cases in the United States topped 2.6 million on Tuesday, reaching 2,606,211 as of 12:33 p.m. Tuesday (12:33 a.m. Wednesday in Manila), according to the Center for Systems Science and Engineering (CSSE) at Johns Hopkins University.

Meanwhile, the national death toll reached 126,360, according to the tally.

The state of New York reported 393,302 cases and 31,403 deaths, both topping the nation. Other states with over 100,000 cases include California, New Jersey, Texas, Florida, Illinois and Massachusetts, the tally showed.

Many states, especially those in the U.S. South and West, have seen increases in Covid-19 cases and hospitalizations. U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services Alex Azar said on Sunday that the “window is closing” for the country to curb the surge of Covid-19 cases.