WORSENING VIRUS CRISIS PUSHES LEADERS TO TAKE NEW MEASURES

Nearly 1 in 400 people in the United States have tested positive in a week

Governors and public health officials across the United States are pleading with Americans to change their behavior and prepare for a long winter as the country shatters record after record for coronavirus cases and hospitalizations.

Both records were broken yet again Friday, as more than 181,100 new cases were reported nationwide, and on Saturday at least 121,000 new cases were recorded. The seven-day average of new daily cases is more than 140,000, with upward trends in 49 states. Some 30 states added more cases in the last week than in any other seven-day period.

Gov. Andrew Cuomo of New York tweeted Saturday morning: “One in every 378 Americans tested positive for COVID over the past week. Wear a mask.” Cuomo’s math is on target: In a population of 330 million, 894,819 people, or 1 in 378, tested positive since last Saturday.

The virus has killed more than 1,000 Americans a day in the past week, a toll that would shock the nation, were it not for the fact that twice as many people were dying daily during a stretch in April, when doctors knew less about how to treat COVID-19, the illness caused by the virus.

Across the U.S., more than 1,300 deaths were reported Saturday. Wyoming reported 17 new deaths Saturday; Oklahoma 23; Montana 36 and South Dakota 53, all singleday records.

On Saturday, New Jersey, West Virginia, Maryland, Minnesota, Indiana, Utah, Montana and Alaska all set single-day records for new cases.

North Dakota also hit a singleday record Saturday, announcing 2,270 new cases. In a reversal, the state’s governor, Doug Burgum, announced several measures late Friday, including a mask mandate, a limit on indoor dining of 50 percent capacity or 150 people and a suspension of high school winter sports and extracurricular activities until Dec. 14.

Violators face potential fines of up to $1,000 for the first offense.

In the spring, North Dakota was one of a handful of states that never entered a lockdown, and Burgum had for weeks resisted any new orders, emphasizing personal responsibility instead of requirements such as a mask mandate.

But the state’s situation has rapidly deteriorated: Over the past week, it has averaged 1,334 cases per day, an increase of 54 percent from the average two weeks earlier, and deaths are climbing fast. Hospitals are so overwhelmed that Monday, Burgum angered the state nurses union by announcing that medical workers who test positive could stay on the job to treat COVID-19 patients as long as the workers show no symptoms.

In New Mexico on Friday, Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham announced the nation’s most sweeping statewide measure of the fall season, issuing a two-week “stay at home” order to begin Monday. She asked people to shelter in place except for essential trips.

Gov. Kate Brown of Oregon issued orders Friday to place the state in a partial lockdown for two weeks, shuttering gyms, halting restaurant dining and mandating that social gatherings have no more than six people. Brown, along with the governors of California and Washington, also urged residents to avoid all nonessential interstate travel in the days ahead.

Dr. Anthony Fauci, the nation’s top infectious disease expert, appeared on “CBS This Morning” on Friday to repeat his pleas to Americans to take the virus seriously.

“If we do the things that are simple public health measures, that soaring will level and start to come down,” he said. “You add that to the help of a vaccine, we can turn this around. It is not futile.”

A vaccine breakthrough has buoyed hopes — “The cavalry is coming,” as Fauci put it — but the country is still facing what officials say could be its grimmest months yet of the pandemic, with tough decisions ahead and thousands of lives in the balance.

Many leaders are leery of stronger measures and economically painful shutdowns, as Democrats and Republicans remain stalled over a new coronavirus stimulus package that could blunt the economic fallout. President Donald

Trump on Friday said his administration would not under “any circumstances” resort to a “lockdown.”

“Lockdowns cost lives, and they cost a lot of problems,” the president said at a news conference where officials said they hope to see millions of people immunized against the coronavirus by the end of the year.

A vaccine could be available to the general public as early as April, Trump said, a timeline echoed by experts such as Fauci. But in the meantime, coronavirus cases are soaring.

Veronica Miller, a professor at the UC Berkeley School of Public Health who signed an open letter this summer urging renewed shutdown measures, said she worries public health experts’ strident warnings are not getting through “to that extent that we need.”

“You can just see the graphs, they’re just really over the top, and it’s so much worse, and it’s going to get worse, and I do not see at the national level — I do not see any sense of urgency,” she said.