The United States has exceeded four million new COVID-19 cases in November alone, a horrific new monthly record in a country with neither a national plan nor national unity to combat the raging pandemic.
More than 4.02 million new cases were recorded from Nov. 1 to 28 -- or more than one million cases per week, according to data from Johns Hopkins University. This massive and world-leading surge pushed the country's total cases to more than 13 million, along with 264,000 total deaths. The U.S. still leads the world in both categories.
The U.S. reported 205,557 new cases Friday, the first time cases per day have exceeded 200,000 and another clear indication the exponential spread of the pandemic is threatening to rage out of control.
This new but unwanted all-time high was reached about three weeks after the U.S. first reported 100,000 daily cases on November 4.
Total cases for November will more than double the previous record of 1.9 million cases set in October.
Also, there were 176,600 new cases and 1,283 deaths on Saturday alone, said the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). This toll brought to 1.16 million the total number of new cases over the past seven days. The U.S. crossed the 12 million case thresholds only on November 21.
To put into perspective how brutally the U.S. is suffering from the pandemic, the four million U.S. cases in November alone is more than the total number of cases in each of 208 other countries in the world since the pandemic began.
Including the U.S., there are only 12 countries with more than a million COVID-19 cases, based on a tally by Worldometers.
The horrific severity of the pandemic under the watch of outgoing president Donald Trump has reached new heights as the U.S. stumbles blindly into a dangerous winter season without national leadership or a clear-cut plan to mitigate the terrible outcomes.
Hospitalizations and deaths, the twin handmaids of any rise in new daily cases, are inevitably on the rise.
On Saturday, the U.S. surpassed 91,000 hospitalizations from COVID-19 -- the highest since the start of the pandemic last January. Hospitals in more than two dozen states warn of a dearth of healthcare workers and hospital beds as the number of COVID-19 patients continues to surge.
The death toll is also climbing to levels unseen since the early months of the pandemic. More than 264,000 people have died from the disease to date. The only silver lining in this horizon of doom is the looming appearance of at least three COVID-19 vaccines by the first quarter of 2021.
