US breaks record with 100,000 new daily Covid cases as officials warn White House

The head of the National Institutes of Health said wearing masks this winter could save around 130,000 lives

As Americans anxiously watched vote counts in the presidential election, another tally was running up. On Wednesday, the US experienced 100,000 new coronavirus cases in a single day for the first time, according to the Washington Post, as top health officials warned the White House and the public that more needed to be done to stop the pandemic.

Seventeen states, including Kansas, Tennessee, Virginia, Oklahoma, Montana, Iowa, North Dakota, South Dakota, Ohio, Nebraska, Minnesota, Indiana and Virginia have also reported record hospitalisation rates, adding to the nearly 9.5 million Americans who have caught the virus so far.

The US is now experiencing a third major wave in cases after brief reprieves in the spring and summer. The outbreak has been surging since September in the US, while countries like Britain, Italy, Greece and Hungary have imposed their own re-upped coronavirus measures in recent days as they face new spikes.

In the days leading up to the election, public health officials in the US  warned the White House and America at large that more could be done to stop the virus.

Dr Deborah Birx, the coronavirus response coordinator, sent a private memo to the White House castigating what she saw as an inadequate pandemic response, according to the New York Times.

“We are entering the most concerning and most deadly phase of this pandemic,” the memo read. “This is not about lockdowns — It hasn’t been about lockdowns since March or April. It’s about an aggressive balanced approach that is not being implemented.”

Dr Francis Collins, director of the National Institutes of Health, wrote in a blog post on Tuesday that if all Americans wore masks this winter, it could save 130,000 lives, but that the act has become dangerously politicised, a tacit criticism of the president.

“As we anxiously await the approved vaccines for Covid-19 and other advances in its prevention and treatment, the life-saving potential of face coverings simply can’t be overstated,” he wrote in the post. “I know that many people are tired of this message, and, unfortunately, mask-wearing has been tangled up in political perspectives at this time of deep divisions in our country.”

The president, meanwhile, spent the final days of the campaign falsely claiming the US was “turning the corner” on the pandemic, and hinted after the election he may try and remove Dr Anthony Fauci, the nation’s top infectious disease expert, who has at times publicly contradicted the president’s upbeat assessments of the coronavirus response.