The United States on Wednesday recorded over 100,000 new coronavirus cases in a single day for the first time since the pandemic began, bursting past a grim threshold even as the wave of infections engulfing the country shows no sign of receding.
The total count of new infections on Wednesday was more than 107,800, according to a New York Times database. Twenty-three states have recorded more cases in the past week than in any other seven-day stretch.
Five states — Maine, Minnesota, Indiana, Nebraska and Colorado — set single-day case records. Cases were also 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 relative to their population. But other states have seen steep recent increases in the last 14 days.
Daily case reports in Minnesota, on average, have increased 102 per cent over that time, while those in Indiana have risen 73 per cent. For months, Maine had among the lowest levels of transmission anywhere in the country, but new cases there have more than tripled. In Wyoming, new cases are up 73 per cent, while in Iowa they have more than doubled.
Deaths related to the coronavirus, which lag behind case reports, have increased 21 per cent across the country in the last two weeks.
Hospitals in some areas are feeling the strain of surging caseloads. More than 50,000 people are currently hospitalized with Covid-19 across the country, according to the Covid Tracking Project, an increase of roughly 64 per cent since the beginning of October.
Dr Anthony S. Fauci, the country’s top infectious disease expert, predicted in June when new cases were averaging roughly 42,000 a day, that the rate would eventually reach 100,000 a day if the pandemic were not 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.
In an interview on Friday, Dr Fauci told The Washington Post that the country would most likely hit the 100,000 marks soon.
“We’re in for a whole lot of hurt,” he said.
Dr Fauci said that the country “could not possibly be positioned more poorly” as winter approaches and colder temperatures lead people to gather indoors.
States report new cases unevenly from day to day, so seven-day averages are a more reliable gauge of trends than an individual day’s figures are. But Wednesday was bad by that measure as well, with the seven-day average exceeding 90,000, the highest since the pandemic began.
During the early days of the pandemic in March and April, testing in the United States was very limited, so it is not possible to say with certainty that the virus is spreading faster now than it did then.
But the pattern of infection has clearly 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.
Dr. Hanage called Wednesday’s milestone “the completely foreseeable consequence of not taking pandemic management seriously.” And he said the country would see “hospitalizations and deaths increase in due course.”
“This is desperately concerning,” Dr. 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 the worst 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.”
The Italian government announced Wednesday night that it would lock down a significant portion of the country, including the northern regions that are its economic engine, in an effort to stop a resurgent wave of coronavirus infections.
Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte said the measures, the most drastic since the nationwide lockdown in March, would take effect on Friday and will seal off six regions in the country’s deeply infected north and highly vulnerable, and poorer, south.
“The situation is particularly critical,” Mr. Conte said at an evening news conference. He said the virus was moving at a “strong and even violent” pace.
Across Europe, efforts to halt a second wave of cases with piecemeal measures are being replaced by far stricter rules — and hurried efforts to bolster health systems that could quickly reach capacity in the coming weeks.
Starting Thursday, England will be under a second lockdown. Poland will shut schools and shops this weekend, and Lithuania will enter a full lockdown. Switzerland has called in the army to bolster hospitals. And France’s health minister is pushing to extend a state of emergency until February.
In Italy, the new measures will ban residents of the six regions from crossing borders except for work, health or other “situations of necessity,” Mr. Conte said. Movement within the regions will also be strictly limited. Bars and restaurants will be closed in all of the regions and shops selling nonessential goods will be closed in most of them.
Three of the regions span the country’s northwest and include Lombardy, which is the home of Italy’s financial capital Milan, Piedmont and Aosta Valley. The southern regions are Calabria, Puglia and the island of Sicily.
Mr Conte said the restrictions, which have triggered fierce opposition from business groups, restaurants and many citizens exasperated with government limits on their freedom, were being put in place because “there is a high probability that some regions will exceed the critical limits in intensive care units” in the coming weeks.
“We necessarily have to intervene,” he said.
The country will be essentially divided into three zones: red, orange and yellow, each with its own restrictions. The government will make those assessments on a weekly basis.
The announcement adds specifics to a new government decree, announced earlier on Wednesday, which imposed a 10 p.m. curfew around the country and closed museums, high schools and, on the weekend, shopping malls. Mr. Conte also “strongly recommended” that Italians stay home during the day, but deferred the decision to establish local lockdowns to the country’s health minister and the regional governors.
Mr. Conte said he had chosen a more targeted approach rather than a blanket lockdown because nationwide measures might be ineffective for the most infected areas and too draconian for places with fewer cases.
In Britain, Mr. Johnson spoke before Parliament on Wednesday, saying there was no alternative to a monthlong lockdown if a “medical and moral disaster” was to be avoided. For weeks, Mr. Johnson had resisted such drastic measures, rejecting calls from scientists who advise the government, and from the opposition Labour Party, for an earlier but shorter lockdown.
Britain has been the worst-hit country by the pandemic in Europe, with more than 60,000 deaths.
London was bustling with shoppers hours before the new rules took effect. Stores, restaurants, pubs and other nonessential businesses must close for a month; schools will remain open. People will be asked to stay home unless they are needed at work, or out to buy food or exercise.
Germany and France, which tried piecemeal measures, have reimposed nationwide lockdowns.
Discontent has mounted throughout Italy in recent weeks, with restaurant and bar owners taking to the streets to protest early closings recently imposed by the authorities. Yet Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte has vowed to carry on with the new restrictive measures.
At the Vatican, Pope Francis on Wednesday returned to his private library for his weekly general audience, as he urged people to follow the recommendations of political and health authorities. The pope stopped public audiences in March, but resumed them at the beginning of September, allowing small groups to participate in a Vatican courtyard or the audience hall.
Switzerland called on the army to support its medical services on Wednesday as the daily number of virus cases hit a new peak. The Swiss cabinet said it agreed to deploy up to 2,500 military personnel to support testing, care and transport services. Switzerland recorded more than 10,000 cases on Wednesday, a single-day record, and 73 deaths.
Lithuania said it would impose a nationwide lockdown as of Friday, after the number of new cases tripled in recent weeks, while the prime minister of Denmark, and most of the government, went into quarantine after the justice minister tested positive for the virus.
Poland stopped short of a national lockdown but announced new restrictions on Wednesday. Cultural institutions and nonessential shops in commercial centres must close on Saturday, and the number of customers allowed into other shops will be limited. Hotels will only be allowed to accept business travellers, and all schools starting at first grade will switch to online learning.
The New York Times
