#magawinning: Double The Daily Numbers In Less Than A Month

The U.S. shatters its daily case record for the 11th time in a month.

As clashes over face-covering mandates and school reopening plans intensified throughout the United States, the country shattered its single-day record for new cases on Thursday — more than 75,600, according to a New York Times database.

This was the 11th time in the past month that the record had been broken. The previous single-day record, 68,241 cases, was announced last Friday. The number of daily cases has more than doubled since June 24, when the country registered 37,014 cases after a lull in the outbreak had kept the previous record, 36,738, standing for two months.

Dr. Anthony Fauci, the top U.S. infectious disease specialist, warned senators in June that cases could reach 100,000 a day in the United States if outbreaks at the time were not contained.

It’s not just cases that are breaking records, so are deaths. Florida on Thursday reported 156 new fatalities, its highest number. It was one of 10 states to reach a record for deaths in a single day this week, joining Alabama, Arizona, Hawaii, Idaho, Montana, Oregon, South Carolina, Texas and Utah.

As cases have soared, cities and more than half of the states are issuing mask requirements to try to stop the spread. Gov. Asa Hutchinson of Arkansas, a Republican, announced a face covering requirement on Thursday, after previously taking a more hands-off approach. Gov. Jared Polis of Colorado, a Democrat, also issued a mask order on Thursday, after questioning whether such a mandate would be enforceable.

But there remains firm resistance in many circles, including from some Republican leaders who view mask requirements as a threat to personal liberty.

Gov. Brian Kemp of Georgia, who announced this week that he was suspending all local mask mandates, filed a lawsuit on Thursday challenging the authority of leaders in Atlanta to require masks inside their city’s limits.

Also on Thursday, health officials in Dallas announced that the city’s public and private schools would conduct classes virtually for the first three weeks of the school year, which begins there on Aug. 17. Several other large school districts have announced plans to rely on distance learning when they reopen for the upcoming school year, bucking pressure from the Trump administration.

The White House press secretary, Kayleigh McEnany, on Thursday reiterated President Trump’s view that schools must open in the fall. “When he says open,” she said, “he means open and full, kids being able to attend each and every day at their school. The science should not stand in the way of this.”

Dr. Fauci said in an interview on Thursday on Facebook with its chief executive, Mark Zuckerberg, that after its initial peak, the nation never succeeded in driving the virus beneath a plateau of about 20,000 new cases a day.

After the recent surge in coronavirus cases in the U.S., deaths are now rising, too.

In St. Petersburg, Fla., this week. Florida on Thursday reported 156 coronavirus fatalities, its highest daily number.Credit...Zack Wittman for The New York Times

The reopening and relaxing of social-distancing restrictions in some states may be contributing to the first noticeable nationwide increase in coronavirus fatalities since April, when the pandemic initially peaked.

The number of cases in late June surged higher than during the outbreak’s first peak. At this same time, daily Covid-19 fatalities decreased slightly, leading President Trump to proclaim that deaths were “way down.” But that divergence may have come to an end last week, when the average number of deaths per day began steadily rising again.

Public health experts have pointed to a few factors that help explain why the death count was initially flat. Treatment has improved and young people, who are less likely to die from Covid-19, make up a larger share of new cases.

Additionally, more widespread testing means cases are caught sooner, on average. That means that the lag between diagnosis and death would be longer than in March, when tests were in critically short supply.

Many of the states that reopened early are the ones seeing the biggest increases, while New York, the country’s hardest-hit city, has seen a 64 percent drop since June 1.