cases surging (10/24)

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from Daily Covid-19 cases will hit six digits soon, expert warns, as US reports a one-day high of more than 83,000 infections

[www.cnn.com]

The US just marked a harrowing milestone: It recorded its highest one-day number of Covid-19 infections Friday at more than 83,000 -- more than 6,000 higher than the country's previous record set in July.

And as the fall surge continues, the daily numbers will get worse, experts warn.
"We easily will hit six-figure numbers in terms of the number of cases," Michael Osterholm, director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota, told CNN Friday night. "And the deaths are going to go up precipitously in the next three to four weeks, following usually new cases by about two to three weeks."

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from Fauci says it might be time to mandate masks as Covid-19 surges across US

[www.cnn.com]

Covid-19 has been worsening across the United States, with cases rising in 32 states Friday and holding steady in 17 more. The University of Washington's Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation said the country was entering a winter surge as new infections passed 75,000 in a single day on Friday and more than 800 deaths were reported.

Mask mandates may be tricky to enforce, but it might be time to call for them, Fauci said.

"There's going to be a difficulty enforcing it, but if everyone agrees that this is something that's important and they mandate it and everybody pulls together and says, you know, we're going to mandate it but let's just do it, I think that would be a great idea to have everybody do it uniformly," he said.

As cooler weather comes, people need to "double down" on measures that work, Fauci said. "Universal mask wearing" is one, he said, as is keeping a distance from others and frequent hand washing. "They sound very simple. But we're not uniformly doing that and that's one of the reasons we're seeing these surges," Fauci said.