The United States, after battling the coronavirus for eight months, recorded over 99,000 new cases on Friday, a global record. Two dozen states reported their worst weeks for new cases; none showed any improvement.
The numbers cap the country’s worst week for virus cases, with more than 500,000 new cases overall. The country also passed nine million infections since the pandemic started.
At least 1,200 counties — a full third of the country — now qualify as a virus hot spot, Dr. Deborah Birx, the White House coronavirus response coordinator, said in private a call with governors on Friday.
Clusters of states appear to be at differing phases of their outbreaks. In the Great Plains, North Dakota and South Dakota have recorded extremely high numbers of cases for weeks; In the Midwest, Illinois, Michigan and Ohio are experiencing swift, alarming rises in case counts.
Though numbers in states like New Hampshire and Maine remain low, the Northeast is backsliding after long periods of stability. Maine has had three of the four highest single-day totals this week.
Maryland’s governor, Larry Hogan, renewed its state of emergency this week. While he noted that the state’s cases and positivity rates are lower than in other parts of the country, he warned residents to avoid traveling to hot spots. “This virus does not recognize state borders,” Gov. Hogan said.
Yet experts warn that the overall picture could be a convergence, with the virus resurging to high levels across the entire country.
“We’re going to see much less evidence of regionalization of this virus over the course of the next several weeks,” said Dr. Michael Osterholm, an infectious diseases expert at the University of Minnesota. “I think this is going to ultimately end up being an entire country on fire.”
“I don’t see any location in the United States that’s going to be free of a major increase in cases,” he said. “And I think we’re just getting started.”
Hospitalizations and deaths are also trending upward. Across the nation, more than 46,600 people were hospitalized with the virus on Friday, an increase of about 25 percent over the past two weeks, according to The Covid Tracking Project. The country has averaged just over 800 deaths a day over the past week.
On Friday, officials in Utah deployed a statewide wireless emergency alert because of the rising case counts that read: “Almost every county is a high transmission area. Hospitals are nearly overwhelmed.”
More than 1,000 Americans died from Covid-19 on both Wednesday and Thursday, an increase of 16 percent from two weeks ago. In total, more than 229,000 Americans have died from the virus.
The New York Times