Despite case-reporting lulls over the long holiday weekend, the number of Americans hospitalized with COVID-19 continues a record-breaking rise, with no let-up in the pace of deaths, according to a news report from the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy (CIDRAP) at the University of Minnesota.
The total number of cases in the United States is 13, 545, 793, while total deaths are 268,103, according to the COVID-19 Dashboard by the Center for Systems Science and Engineering at Johns Hopkins University.
At the international level, the pandemic total topped 63 million with weekly cases declining for the first time since September, mainly led by declines in European countries that imposed new lockdowns, the head of the World Health Organization (WHO) said.
With the Thanksgiving holiday now in the rearview mirror, health officials are bracing for another spike in infections. Though holiday travel was lighter than usual, and though many people heeded public health recommendations not to gather, US air travel over the weekend was at its highest point since the pandemic began, CNN reported.
Anthony Fauci, MD, who directs the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and is a member of the White House Coronavirus Task Force, said on ABC's This Week that the nation could see a "surge upon a surge."
