US faces record surge of coronavirus cases as election looms

The United States faces a record surge of coronavirus cases as more than 90,000 people tested positive on Thursday, pushing hospitals to the brink of capacity.

This marks the first time the US has crossed 90,000 cases in one day, nearly 10,000 more than the previous high of 80,662 cases set just a day before on Wednesday.

The country reported at least 91,248 new cases Thursday with 21 states reporting their highest daily number of hospitalized COVID-19 patients since the pandemic started.

Also, over 1,000 people lost their lives due to the infection on Thursday, marking the third time in October that milestone has been passed in a single day.

"If states do not react to rising numbers by re-imposing mandates, cumulative deaths could reach 514,000 by the same date," said the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation at the University of Washington School of Medicine in its latest forecast.

"The fall/winter surge should lead to a daily death toll that is approximately three times higher than now by mid-January. Hospital systems, particularly ICUs, are expected to be under extreme stress in December and January in 18 states."

Meanwhile, Ashish Jha, dean of the Brown University School of Public Health in Providence, Rhode Island, said the US is not “quite prepared” as it does not have the right kind of testing.

“We are having some of the largest outbreaks that we’ve had during the entire pandemic. And nine, 10 months into this pandemic, we are still largely not quite prepared,” Jha said.

“We don’t have the kind of testing that we need. There are a lot of problems with large outbreaks happening in many, many different parts of the country. And of course, we’re going into the fall and winter, which will, of course, make things very, very difficult,” Jha told Reuters in an interview.

This comes as much of the country’s attention is focused on Tuesday’s presidential election.

Republican President Donald Trump, who has repeatedly downplayed the virus, is under harsh criticism over his mishandling of the pandemic which has made the US the hardest-hit country by the infection.

The president, however, claimed at a campaign rally last week that the pandemic was going to “end quickly.”

Fauci says US may not be back to normal till 2022 as COVID-19 cases continue to surge

Top US infectious diseases expert Fauci says life for many people may not return to normal until 2022, due to the ongoing surge in COVID-19 infections.

His top infectious diseases expert Anthony Fauci has, however, warned that everyday life for many people may not return to normal until 2022.

The US won’t “start having some semblance of normality” until “the end of 2021 and perhaps into the next year,” Fauci said in a virtual interview with Melbourne University on Wednesday.

Trump had disagreed with Fauci on COVID-19, including social-distancing guidelines and masks wearing, calling the doctor as “a little bit of an alarmist.”

He said last week that if Fauci was in charge, half a million people would be dead by the disease across the country.

Meanwhile, the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy credited Trump ahead of the election, saying his administration has “taken several actions” to “defeat this disease.”

His Democratic challenger Joe Biden, however, said that the statement “stunned” him, describing it as “an insult to every single person suffering from COVID-19, and to every family who has lost a loved one.”

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