CHICAGO • The United States, which reported its first known coronavirus case in Washington state 282 days ago, has surpassed nine million total infections, including more than half a million in the past week, as Covid-19 spirals out of control in the lead-up to election day.
Across the country, alarming signs suggested the worst was yet to come: The nation reported more cases on Thursday - at least 86,600 - than on any other single day.
With the presidential election days away, the country is now averaging more than 75,000 new cases daily, the worst stretch of the pandemic by that measure.
Deaths, which lag behind cases, remain far below their spring levels, but have ticked upwards to about 780 each day.
More cases have been identified in the US than in any other country, though some nations have higher per capita infection rates.
The White House coronavirus task force on Thursday warned of a persistent and broad spread of Covid-19 in the western half of the country, and its members urged aggressive measures to curb the surge in infections.
The hardest-hit areas include a number of battleground states that will play an important role in Tuesday's US presidential election as Republican President Donald Trump seeks a second term against Democratic challenger Joe Biden.
"We are on a very difficult trajectory. We're going in the wrong direction," said Dr Anthony Fauci, task force member and director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases.
"If things do not change, if they continue on the course we're on, there's gonna be a whole lot of pain in this country with regard to additional cases and hospitalisations, and deaths," Dr Fauci said in an interview with news network CNBC on Wednesday night.
He indicated that the first doses of a coronavirus vaccine might become available to some high-risk Americans in late December or early January, if all goes well.
Meanwhile, a string of prominent public health experts - notably Dr Fauci and Dr Scott Gottlieb, a former commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration under President Trump - have said it is time to seriously consider a national mandate to curb the spread of the virus.
Overseas this week, Russian President Vladimir Putin became the latest foreign leader to impose a national mandate for citizens to wear masks.
Mr Trump is opposed to a mandate, and Mr Biden has conceded that a presidential order for all Americans to wear masks would almost certainly face - and most likely fall to - a legal challenge.
Public health and legal experts say it would be far better for Mr Biden - or Mr Trump, for that matter - to use his powers of persuasion to convince Americans that covering one's face to curb the spread of the virus is a patriotic or civic-minded action.
But some public health experts fear that Mr Trump - who routinely mocks Mr Biden for wearing a mask and whose aides often forgo them even as the White House has become its own coronavirus hot spot - has so poisoned the discussion around masks that wearing them will always be construed as a political statement.
NYTIMES, REUTERS
