BUCKLE DOWN

U.S. Hits Bleak New Milestone: 10 Million COVID-19 Cases

The U.S. now accounts for more than 20 percent of the world’s coronavirus cases. Its last million were reported in the last 10 days alone.

The United States officially hit 10 million COVID-19 cases Monday, according to Johns Hopkins University coronavirus tracking data. The milestone comes the same day that Vice President Mike Pence was scheduled to host the White House’s coronavirus task force for the first time in weeks, per The New York Times. The U.S. now accounts for approximately one-fifth of global COVID-19 caseloads, with its seven-day average of new cases exceeding more than 100,000 daily cases—more than any other country. “We’re going to see these case numbers really start to explode,” former FDA Commissioner Scott Gottlieb told CNBC last Friday. Without state-level targeting mitigation and prevention strategies, Gottlieb said there could be trouble ahead in December and January. “It’s not just the cases; it’s the hospitalizations as well. That’s really the number to watch: 53,000 people hospitalized, 10,500 people in ICUs. That’s a lot, and it’s growing very quickly.”