Via The New York Times: Covid-19 News: U.S. Breaks Global Case Record. Excerpt:
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.
Fourteen states reported single-day records for new cases on Friday: Wyoming, North Dakota, South Dakota, Utah, Montana, Illinois, Minnesota, Pennsylvania, West Virginia, Oregon, Kansas, Ohio, Colorado and Maine. And three states hit record deaths: Tennessee, Montana and New Mexico.
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. But on the same day, President Trump once again sought to play down the severity of the coronavirus. At a campaign rally in Michigan, he ridiculed a reporter for wearing a mask, claimed that “doctors get more money if somebody dies from Covid” and implied that deaths from the virus were artificially inflated.
The outbreaks look different across the country, with the surge cresting at varying levels in different clusters of states.
In the Great Plains, North Dakota and South Dakota have recorded extremely high numbers of cases for weeks: The Dakotas are ranked first and second nationally in cases per capita. Officials in North Dakota reported a single-day record on Friday for the second day in a row. The neighboring states of Montana and Wyoming also hit single-day records for new cases on Friday.
In the Midwest, Illinois, Ohio and Michigan are experiencing swift, alarming rises in case counts. In Illinois, new cases have increased 70 percent in two weeks, with more than 8,010 new cases on Friday, the second single-day record in a row. Ohio reported 3,845 new cases on Friday, the second single-day record in a row. And Michigan has been averaging more than 2,800 cases per day for the past week, an increase of 91 percent from the average two weeks ago.
In the Northeast, though numbers in states like New Hampshire and Maine remain low, they are backsliding after long periods of stability. Maine in particular has seen three of the four highest single-day totals this week. Rhode Island limited gatherings to 10 people on Friday, after a single high school party led to five positive coronavirus cases in the state and 1,000 people in quarantine.
In the West, Colorado and Utah both reported single-day records for new cases. Last Friday, Utah officials issued urgent pleas saying they were planning to open a field hospital. A week later, the state reported a record 2,260 new cases. Officials deployed a statewide wireless emergency alert because of the rising case counts on Friday, which read: “Almost every county is a high transmission area. Hospitals are nearly overwhelmed.”
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 Thursday, more than 1,000 Americans died from Covid-19, an increase of 16 percent from two weeks ago. On the same day, Donald Trump Jr., the president’s son, said in an appearance on Fox News that deaths were down to “almost nothing.” In total, more than 229,000 Americans have died from the virus.
