The United States crossed another grim coronavirus pandemic milestone on Wednesday, recording over 100,000 new coronavirus cases in a single day for the first time since the beginning of the nation's outbreak. More concerning, the new wave of infections washing over the country shows no signs of receding.
On top of the new daily case record, the U.S. has set a new seven-day average record of 86,352, according to data compiled by Johns Hopkins University. Deaths have also risen to an average of 846 per day.
While daily new case numbers throughout the country are on the rise, the nation's surge is concentrated in the Midwest and Great Plains regions. These regions were left relatively unharmed from the country's outbreaks seen during the spring and summer months. Cases are also continuing to climb throughout the West and even the Northeast, with daily infection rates rising dangerously close to territories that originally landed regional states under stay-at-home mandates.
The White House's Coronavirus Task Force Coordinator Dr. Deborah Birx had warned in an internal memo leaked to the Washington Post that daily case counts were expected to reach 100,000 by the end of this week. Moreover, Dr. Anthony Fauci, the nation's top infectious disease expert, had forecasted back in June that daily cases were expected to reach numbers seen on Wednesday if the pandemic was not brought under control by public health measures.
In a plea to U.S. citizens, Dr. Francis Collins, director of the National Institutes of Health, asked the public to adopt nationwide mask wearing to not only protect themselves, but end the spread of the virus as the nation heads towards its winter and flu seasons.
In a written statement, Collins cited a new study published in the journal Nature Medicine that estimates that if most the public wears facial coverings when leaving the house, a projected 130,000 lives could be saved by March. However, the study warns that if mask wearing continues at the public's current rate of roughly 50% and social distancing measures are not followed, U.S. coronavirus deaths could reach more than one million by the end of February.
The U.S. has recorded nearly 9.5 million cases and over 230,000 deaths.
Vaccine Update
AstraZeneca's
The Oxford Vaccine Trial Chief Investigator Andrew Pollard told British lawmakers that while he forecasts that the vaccine's results could be reviewed by regulators this year, that is only a "small chance" that the vaccine would be deployed for public use before Christmas, or December 25.
"If I put on my rose-tinted spec, i would hope that we will see positive interim data from both Oxford and from Pfizer
