Over the summer during a Congressional hearing, Dr. Anthony Fauci, the nation's top infectious disease expert, warned lawmakers that the U.S. could reach a point where it was seeing over 100,000 new cases of COVID-19 each day. The frightening comments prompted headlines across the country.
Half a year later, it's become the norm.
It has now been six weeks since the U.S. has seen a day where local health departments reported less than 100,000 new cases of COVID-19, according to a database kept by Johns Hopkins University.
On Nov. 3, more than 125,000 new cases of the virus — at that point, a record-shattering total — were reported across the country. In the 42 days since, the U.S. has recorded at least 100,000 new cases of the virus every single day.
Between Nov. 3 and today, the COVID Tracking Project reports that the seven-day rolling average of new cases each day has nearly doubled, rising from about 96,000 a day to nearly 209,000 a day.
During that time span, the lowest number of new cases reported came on Nov. 26 — Thanksgiving Day — when local health departments reported about 112,000 new cases throughout the country. That figure proved to be an outlier, most likely due to many health departments choosing not to release data over the holiday.
The highest number of new cases reported occurred on Friday when more than 233,000 new cases of COVID-19 were reported around the country.
The increase in cases has led to a spike in hospitalizations across the country. The COVID Tracking Project reports that there are currently about 113,000 people across the country fighting COVID-19 in a hospital, an all-time high. Hospitalizations have spiked in every region in the county in the past six weeks, though the Midwest has seen a slight decrease in hospital capacity in recent days.
COVID-19 deaths are also currently at an all-time high. In the past six weeks, the seven-day rolling average of deaths linked to the virus reported each day has nearly tripled, rising from 852 a day to nearly 2,500 a day.
The U.S. surpassed 300,000 total deaths linked to the virus earlier this week. Roughly 65,000 Americans have died of COVID-19 in the last six weeks.
