U.S. Coronavirus Update: New Cases Break Record 70,000 For The First Time; Infections Up 40% Since Early July

UPDATED with latest: As the coronavirus pandemic continues to ravage the United States, the nation reported a record number of new cases on Friday. According to the Centers for Disease Control, 72,045 Americans were diagnosed with COVID-19 in the past 24 hours. That’s the first time the daily, CDC-reported total has topped 70,000.

For perspective, it was the beginning of the July when the United States breached the 50,000 cases-per-day mark for the first time. That’s a 20,000 case-per-day jump in just over two weeks.

The rise stateside drove a worldwide record 237,743 new cases of COVID-19 in the past 24 hours.

Texas set a state record for coronavirus infections Tuesday, reporting 10,745 new cases. Florida reported 11,466 more cases of COVID-19 on Friday. California saw its third-highest daily total of new infections on Friday, with 9,986.

The CDC reported nearly 1,000 new deaths from COVID-19 on Friday, with 926. That number might have been expected after Florida, Texas and South Carolina notched all-time highs of Covid-19-related fatalities on Thursday.

Meanwhile New York, one the epicenter of the virus in the U.S., announced a partial move into stage 4 of its reopening plans as cases continued to fall there.

Also on Friday, states began to firm up very different plans for education in the fall term.

California mandated that the majority of its schools keep their campuses closed at the beginning of the fall term.

Texas education officials on Friday extended the time schools can offer online-only instruction before resuming in-person classes in the new academic year. Iowa’s Governor said Friday the state’s schools must resume in-person instruction in the new academic year, even as coronavirus cases in the state trend upward.

Meanwhile, the White House apparently blocked the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention from providing a witness to testify at a House Committee on Education and Labor hearing next week on opening schools during the pandemic.

Globally the World Health Organization reported a record 237,743 new cases of COVID-19 in the past 24 hours, for a total of 13,616,593 infections worldwide. That number is driven primarily by growing numbers in the United States and Brazil, which will soon become the second country in the world with 2 million coronavirus cases. It trails only the U.S.

PREVIOUSLY, July 10: Centers for Disease Control tracking revealed a near-record number of cases in the U.S. on Friday as the situation in the country worsened by nearly ever statistical measure. The 59,260 cases reported on Friday represented the second highest total in the country since the pandemic began. The record of 64,771 new infections came just two days before.

Eight days ago, the United States breached the 50,000 cases-per-day mark for the first time. Escalation has been such that, in the time since, daily new cases have only dipped below the 50,000 mark only twice, with 60,000 now seemingly the new normal. CDC data shows that the record for daily new cases has been broken three times in the past 10 days, not to mention Friday’s near-record.

Thirty-three states saw an increase in new cases compared to last week, according to CNN. At least 26 states are rolling back or pausing reopenings as the virus continues to spike and spread in new directions across the country.

And it’s not just the U.S. According to the New York Times, Brazil, Mexico, India and South Africa also notched their largest daily increases in cases on Friday.

As a result, on Friday the World Health Organization announced a record number of new daily cases across the globe, with 228,102. The U.S. leads all countries in terms of raw daily numbers.

PREVIOUSLY, July 2:Last Friday, after U.S. health officials reported a single-day record of 39,327 new infections, CNN’s Dr. Sanjay Gupta warned that “we are in the middle of a public health disaster.”

Today, the country has breached the 50,000 new cases per day mark, a rise of more than 25 percent in just six days. And it’s actually worse than that. The exact count on Thursday was 54,357 new COVID-19 cases nationwide, according to the Centers for Disease Control.

President Donald Trump, who held a news conference to discuss a heartening jobs report today was upbeat about the fight against the virus.

“We have some areas where we are putting out the flames or the fires,” Trump said, a day after he expressed hope the virus would “disappear.”

“I think it’s working out very well,” Trump said Thursday. “I think you’ll see that shortly.”

This comes two days after Dr. Anthony Fauci, the nation’s top infectious disease expert, expressed a decidedly dimmer view of the nation’s progress.

“We are now having 40-plus thousand new cases a day,” Fauci said to the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee on Tuesday. “I would not be surprised if we go up to 100,000 a day if this does not turn around.”

Watch the president’s Thursday press conference below.

Shortly after the president’s statements on Thursday, it was reported that Herman Cain, the former Republican presidential candidate and head of Black Voices For Trump, had contracted coronavirus and been taken to an Atlanta-area hospital with problems breathing.

A post to Cain’s Twitter account indicated that he was “resting comfortably” at an Atlanta-area hospital.

The former GOP candidate was at a rally for President Trump on June 20.

On Wednesday, Florida, Arizona, California, North Carolina, Tennessee and Texas reported a record number of new cases. Florida alone saw over 10,000 cases, a new record. At least 23 states have paused reopening plans in the midst of the surge in infections.

PREVIOUSLY, June 24: Weeks after widespread protests and relaxed coronavirus restrictions in many states, the United States saw a near-record one-day spike in new coronavirus cases. The Centers for Disease Control reported 34,313 new infections across the country on Wednesday. That total nears the daily spikes seen at the height of what was then known as the first wave.

The CDC also on Wednesday confirmed 2,336,615 total cases and 121,117 deaths nationwide.

On April 3, the U.S. recorded 34,864 new cases, just slightly higher than today’s total. The all-time high in new cases came three days later on April 6, with 43,438 new infections recorded. That does not bode well for the future.

Also on Wednesday, three of the nation’s most populace states — California, Florida and Texas — reported record high new cases.

The largest of the three, California, saw 7,149 new infections. That’s a jump of 2,000 infections in just 24 hours and by far its largest number of new cases since the outset of the pandemic. The state’s the 14-day infection rate is 5.6 percent. That is up from 5.1 percent. More concerning is a 29 percent increase in hospitalizations over that same 14-day period.

Texas, for its part, reported a record 5,551 new cases, after setting a record just the day before and four new highs in the past week. Houston, with 987 new coronavirus cases, prompted concern from officials. Hospitalizations have more than doubled since Memorial Day, per the Houston Chronicle, and Texas has averaged over 3,000 new cases per day in the past week. That’s nearly double the number from a week earlier.

Florida eclipsed its previous record by well over 1,000 cases, reporting more than 5,500 new infections in a day. The state has surpassed its rolling-average new cases for straight 17 days.

Oklahoma, where the president held a rally this weekend, hit a new rolling average for the 12th consecutive day. That average is up 83 percent from mid-June.

All of this comes as the hardest-hit state in the union, New York, emerged on the other side of its shutdown into Stage 4 of reopening. According to Governor Andrew Cuomo’s office, of the 54,000 or so people tested yesterday, only 1 percent testing positive.

Tellingly, New York and New jersey announced today that visitors from Alabama, Arkansas, Arizona, Florida, North Carolina, South Carolina, Texas, Utah and Washington would all need to undergo a 14-day quarantine before they could move freely.

Seven states on Tuesday reported the highest number of hospitalizations since the pandemic began, according to the Washington Post. They included California, Texas, Arizona, Arkansas, North Carolina, South Carolina and Tennessee.

The World Health Organization said Wednesday that the total number of confirmed coronavirus cases worldwide has surpassed 9 million. That’s up over a million from the week before. The organization reported 473,797 deaths globally. The grim milestone comes after the U.S. eclipsed the 2 million-case mark late last week.

The U.S. is followed in total cases globally by Brazil (1,106,470), Russia (606,881), India (456,183), the UK (306,214) and Peru (257,447). The Americas continue to be a hot spot with Peru and Chile above 250,000 and the U.S. and Brazil numbers one and two worldwide.

The Johns Hopkins Coronavirus Resource Center, whose data has been widely used and tends to track higher than the CDC and WHO numbers, is reporting 9,343,448 total cases globally and 479,818 deaths in 2016 countries and territories.