The US added 1 million new Covid-19 cases only 14 days after the nation hit 8 million cases and multiple states continue reporting their highest daily case counts since the pandemic began, according to data compiled by Johns Hopkins University. This is the fastest the country has added 1 million new cases since the pandemic began.
The latest surge of cases appears to be driven by patients with no symptoms, said Dr. Robert Redfield, the director for the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
A "silent epidemic" of asymptomatic Covid-19 infections is "moving amongst 12- to 30-year-olds" and then making the jump to older people, Redfield told SiriusXM Doctor Radio Reports on Friday.
"This is what is driving the expansion that we're seeing in the outbreak across the country right now," he said.
A positive diagnosis every second
Daily Covid-19 cases in the US hit a new high once again on Friday when health officials reported 91,744 cases, topping previous high of 88,521 cases on Thursday. The top five Covid-19 case days have all occurred in the last eight days.
In total, the US has 9.03 million cases and 229,594 deaths due to the virus, according to Johns Hopkins.
In Florida, health officials reported more than 5,500 cases on Friday, pushing the state's case count past 800,0000 cumulative cases. Florida is the third state to surpass that mark, behind California and Texas, according to Johns Hopkins data.
Nine other states reported their record high single-day of new cases ever, Johns Hopkins reported: Illinois, Indiana, Maine, Michigan, Minnesota, New Mexico, North Carolina, North Dakota and Ohio.
"Today, we now have one person being diagnosed (with) coronavirus every second," said former Baltimore Health Commissioner Dr. Leana Wen. "We have one American dying of coronavirus every two minutes, and that number is increasing."
Wen, an emergency medicine physician, told CNN's Wolf Blitzer on Friday that she is most concerned about the rate of test positivity. In some states, she said one in two people being tested are testing positive.
"That means that we're not doing nearly enough testing, and that every person who tests positive is a canary in a coal mine," she said. "There are almost certainly to be many more, dozens of other cases, that we're not detecting, and that escalation is going to increase in the weeks to come."
The Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation at the University of Washington School of Medicine says it is most likely that by the middle of January, 2,250 Americans will be dying every day from the coronavirus -- three times more than the current rate.
And it could get much worse.
"If states do not react to rising numbers by re-imposing mandates, cumulative deaths could reach 514,000 by the same date," the IHME said in its latest forecast.
"The fall/winter surge should lead to a daily death toll that is approximately three times higher than now by mid-January. Hospital systems, particularly ICUs, are expected to be under extreme stress in December and January in 18 states."
And hospi
