With cold weather looming in many parts of the country and an average of more than 40,000 new cases of COVID-19 being reported each day, the country's leading infectious disease expert said that the United States is "not in a good place," according to a news report from the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy (CIDRAP) at the University of Minnesota.
Those were the words of National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) Director and White House coronavirus task force member Anthony Fauci, MD, who told ABC's Good Morning America that the country is in a bad position right now, with cases and hospitalizations rising in many states and the weather soon to push more people indoors.
"As we get into the fall and winter, you really want the level of community spread to be as low as you can possibly get it," Fauci said. "We really need to intensify the public health measures that we talk about all the time."
The area of the country seeing the biggest surge in new infections is the Midwest. According to a Reuters analysis, the number of COVID-19 tests coming back positive is topping 25 percent in several Midwestern states, led by North Dakota (30 percent) and South Dakota (26 percent). Those two states, along with Wisconsin, set new hospitalization records last recently, with Wisconsin recording new daily highs for seven days in a row.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) also released new data on coronavirus infections in children, and a new poll highlights the financial toll the virus is taking on U.S. families. The U.S. currently stands at over 7 million confirmed COVID-19 cases, with more than 204, 000 deaths, according to the Johns Hopkins online tracker.
