U.S. smashes daily mark with over 100K cases
The U.S. on Wednesday recorded more than 100,000 newcoronavirus cases in a single day for the first time since the pandemic began, bursting past a grimthreshold as the wave of infections engulfing the country shows no sign of receding.
The total count of newinfections was at least 107,000, according to a New York Times database. Twentythree states have recorded more cases in the past week than in any other seven-day stretch.
Five states — Colorado, Indiana, Maine, Minnesota and Nebraska — also set single-day case records Wednesday. Cases were mounting in the Mountain West and even in the Northeast, which over the summer seemed to be getting the virus under control.
North and South Dakota and Wisconsin have led the country for weeks in the number of new cases per capita. But other states have seen recent steep increases in the past 14 days.
Daily case reports in Minnesota, on average, have increased 102 percent over that time, while those in Indiana have risen 73 percent.
For months, Maine had among the lowest levels of transmission anywhere in the country, but new cases there havemore than tripled. In Wyoming, new cases are up 73 percent, while in Iowa they’ve more than doubled.
Deaths related to the coronavirus, which lag behind case reports, have increased 2 1percent across the country in the past twoweeks.
Hospitals in some areas are feeling the strain of surging caseloads. More than 50,000 people are hospitalized with COVID-19 across the country, according to the COVID Tracking Project, an increase of roughly 64 percent since the beginning of October.
Dr. Anthony Fauci, the country’s top infectious disease expert, predicted in June, when new cases were averaging roughly 42,000 a day, that the rate eventually would reach 100,000 a day if the pandemic weren’t brought under control.
His blunt assessments of the country’s failure to control the virus drew attacks from Trump administration officials, including the president, who called him alarmist.
Fauci told the Washington Post lastweek that the country probably would hit the 100,000 mark soon. “We’re infor a whole lot of hurt,” he said.
Fauci also said the U.S. “could not possibly be positioned more poorly” as winter approaches and colder temperatures lead people to gather indoors.
And with the holiday season just weeks away, people will need to make tough decisions about how they will celebrate this year. As the virus spreads, holiday gatherings — traditionally indoors and drawing people who have traveled fromother places — have the potential to become superspreader events.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommends that when making holiday plans, consider the state of the virus in a particular area, including areas where guests may be traveling from, and the length of the event.
As states report new cases unevenly from day to day, seven-day averages are a more reliable gauge of trends. Wednesday was bad by that measure as well, with the seven-day average nearing 92,000, the highest since the pandemic began.
During the early days of the pandemic in March and April, U.S. testing was limited, so it’s not possible to say with certainty that the virus is spreading faster now than it did then.
But the pattern of infection clearly has changed.
Dr. Bill Hanage, an associate professor of epidemiology at Harvard’s T.H. Chan School of Public Health, said this week that while the surges in the spring and summer were concentrated in specific regions—the Northeast in the spring and the Sun Belt in the summer — the current one reflects transmission increases in nearly all parts of the country.
Hanage called Wednesday’s milestone“the completely foreseeable consequence of not taking pandemic management seriously .” He said the country would see “hospitalizations and deaths increase in due course.”
“This is desperately concerning,” Hanage said, “because uncontrolled transmission will end up compromising health care, and in order to preserve it, we will almost certainly end up needing to take stronger action to prevent theworst outcomes.
“Look to Europe to see the consequences of leaving it too late,” he said. “The longer you leave it, the harder it will be to control.”