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 The hardest-hit regions in the West and Midwest encompass a number
of battleground states expected to play a pivotal role in Tuesday's
U.S. presidential election contest between Republican incumbent
Donald Trump and his Democratic challenger, Joe Biden.
"We are on a very difficult trajectory. We're going in the wrong
direction," said Dr. Anthony Fauci, a leading task force member and
director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious
Diseases.
Fauci, the nation's top infectious disease expert, said coronavirus
cases were on the rise in 47 states, and patients were overwhelming
hospitals across the country.
"If things do not change, if they continue on the course we're on,
there's gonna be a whole lot of pain in this country with regard to
additional cases and hospitalizations, and deaths," Fauci said in a
CNBC interview on Wednesday night.
The White House coronavirus task force has warned states in the
middle and western parts of the country that aggressive measures
will be necessary to curb the virus' spread, according to weekly
state reports seen by CNN.
"We continue to see unrelenting, broad community spread in the
Midwest, Upper Midwest and West. This will require aggressive
mitigation to control both the silent, asymptomatic spread and
symptomatic spread," one state's report said.
The ominous assessment was echoed on Thursday by Dr. Ashish Jha,
Brown University's dean of public health, who told Reuters, "things
are very, very bad in the United States right now."
"We are having some of the largest breakouts that we've had during
the entire pandemic," he said, adding that the initial waves of
infections last spring were more localized.
"And nine, 10 months into this pandemic, we are still largely not
quite prepared."
At least a dozen states - Illinois, Indiana, Maine, Michigan,
Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska, New Mexico, North Carolina, North
Dakota, Ohio and Oregon - reported record one-day increases in
COVID-19 cases on Thursday, according to a Reuters tally.
Seventeen states reported a record number of hospitalizations, a
metric that has soared across the country and is independent of how
much testing is being done.
Nationally, health authorities on Thursday confirmed 91,248 more
people tested positive for COVID-19 over the past 24 hours, the
highest single-day increase in cases reported to date, according to
a Reuters tally. The previous 24-hour record tally was 84,169 cases,
set just last Friday.
The number of Americans hospitalized with COVID-19 stood at some
46,000 on Thursday, the most since Aug. 14. More than 229,000 people
have died of the respiratory virus in the United States - the
world's highest national toll - with nearly 9 million infections
documented so far.
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VIRUS 'RAGING'
Ohio Governor Mike DeWine announced the creation of "COVID Defense Teams" of
community leaders to focus on measures for slowing the spread.
"The virus is raging throughout the state, and there is no place to hide,"
DeWine told a news conference as he urged residents to become more diligent in
wearing masks, social distancing and hand-washing.
Health experts believe the virus is surging in part because colder temperatures
are driving social gatherings indoors while Americans fatigued with COVID-19
restrictions are letting their guard down.
Russell Vinik, chief medical officer at University of Utah Health Plans, said
the virus was spreading in his state predominantly through small social
gatherings.
As cases soar across Utah, Vinik said there was a dire need for specialized
medical professionals to handle the surge.
"We have adequate PPE (personal protective equipment)," he said in an interview.
"It's not about hospital beds. It's about trained, specialized providers to take
care of those patients."
As the pandemic threatens to stretch into winter, with a vaccine still months
away, Vinik said hospitals would likely become more strained.
Fauci indicated that the first doses of a vaccine might become available to some
high-risk Americans in late December or early January, if all goes well.
Brown's public health dean said doctors have gotten better at treating COVID-19,
which he said helps explain why death rates have improved somewhat, but many
hospitals are "starting to get filled up."
Trump on the campaign trail has repeatedly downplayed the virus, claiming for
weeks that the country is "rounding the turn," even as new cases and
hospitalizations soar.
At a rally in Arizona on Thursday, the president again argued against taking
stricter measures against the resurgent virus.
Biden and fellow Democrats in Congress have excoriated Trump for his handling of
the health crisis.
(Graphic: https://graphics.reuters.com/world-coronavirus-tracker-and-maps/)
(Reporting by Doina Chiacu in Washington, Aleksandra Michalska in New York and
Lisa Shumaker in Chicago; Additional reporting and writing by Maria Caspani and
Steve Gorman; Editing by Steve Orlofsky, Bill Berkrot, Daniel Wallis and Michael
Perry)
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