The U.S. has now recorded at least 100,000 cases of COVID-19 each day for the last three weeks.
On Monday, at least 169,190 new cases of the coronavirus were recorded throughout the U.S., marking 21 consecutive days that the country has seen at least 100,000 new COVID-19 cases.
During that time span — dating back to Nov. 2 — the number of people in the country hospitalized with complications from the virus has nearly doubled from 48,557 to 85,836.
Currently, about 69% of those hospitalizations are occurring in the South and Midwest, meaning some hospitals in those areas — particularly rural hospitals — are currently operating at capacity.
The massive spike in cases has also caused the number of deaths linked to COVID-19 on a rolling 7-day average to nearly doubled from 826 a day to 1,515 a day. The last time the U.S. saw as many deaths per day as it sees now came back in mid-May when the country was still recovering from the virus' silent and uncontained spread in early spring.
Over the weekend, the U.S. surpassed 3 million new cases in November alone. The country has recorded 12.4 million cases of COVID-19 since the pandemic began, meaning about one-quarter of all of those cases have occurred this month alone.
Despite the bleak outlook on the state of the pandemic in the country, Dr. Anthony Fauci, the county's top expert on infectious diseases, warned Monday that the pandemic could worsen further. He said that if Americans don't follow common-sense public safety measures on Thanksgiving, cases could spike even further in December.
"The chances are that you will see a surge superimposed on a surge," Fauci said.
Fauci recommends limiting Thanksgiving gatherings to members of a single household. He also says Americans need to continue to follow five common public safety measures in order to limit the spread: Adopt uniform mask-wearing, keep social distance, avoid large crowds, gather outdoors as opposed to indoors and continuously wash hands.