After a week of dauntingly high numbers in all parameters of the pandemic, the United States has reached another sobering mark: its highest number of new daily Covid-19 cases since the virus entered the country.
On Saturday, there were 126,742 new coronavirus cases, according to Johns Hopkins University. The record marked the fourth day last week that new cases totaled more than 100,000 and the third day in a row that new cases topped more than 120,000, according to a CNN analysis.
The fall resurgence has brought regular records in cases, people hospitalized and daily deaths — and experts are encouraging measures to mitigate the spread as they warn that the numbers may continue to climb in coming weeks.
“We’re going to see these case numbers really start to explode,” former US Food and Drug Administration Commissioner Dr. Scott Gottlieb told CNBC on Friday.
The virus can be dealt with by targeting mitigation state by state, he said, but the US is not doing that currently, and the lack of intervention could build up for the future, spelling trouble for December and January, he said.
“It’s not just the cases; it’s the hospitalizations as well. That’s really the number to watch: 53,000 people hospitalized, 10,500 people in ICUs. That’s a lot, and it’s growing very quickly.”
Sixteen states reported record high Covid-19 hospitalizations Friday, according to the Covid Tracking Project, and 22 states have reported at least one record high day of coronavirus hospitalizations during November, so far. Since the pandemic started, more than 9.8 million people have been infected and 237,192 people have died of the virus, according to Johns Hopkins.
On Sunday morning, the global number of cases topped 50 million, with the US, India, Brazil and Russia, in that order, the hardest hit, composing more than half the cases, Johns Hopkins reports.
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