U.S. seeing 'clearly a resurgence' of coronavirus

U.S. seeing 'clearly a resurgence' of coronavirus

[NFA] The U.S. death toll from the coronavirus topped 213,000 and former FDA commissioner Scott Gottlieb said that the U.S. is in for a "difficult fall and winter." This report produced by Zachary Goelman.

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on Sunday (October 11) reported over 53,000 cases of the coronavirus - nearly 7.7 million in total - and another 577 fatalities, to bring the U.S. death toll to 213,614.

And former FDA Commissioner Scott Gottlieb told CBS News the trends seem to be getting worse.

"I think we're going to face a difficult fall and winter.

What we thought might be just a bump after Labor Day, clearly is a resurgence in a virus heading into the fall and the winter.

You're seeing cases build across the entire country.

" A Reuters analysis shows new cases of COVID-19 in the United States hit a two-month high on Friday (October 9) with over 58,000 infections reported.

And hospitalizations in the Midwest were at record levels for a fifth day in a row.

"And most concerning is hospitalizations are building.

People look at the number of cases and they tend to discount that.

They say that because we're testing more, we're turning over more cases.

But the hospitalizations are the clearest objective measure of rising infection around the country." The daily death toll has come down from a peak in July, but the U.S. is still losing nearly 700 people a day to the virus.

A new update of the University of Washington's widely-cited model projects the country's daily death rate will more than triple by mid-January to 2,250.

That model forecasts an overall 395,000 fatalities by Feb.

1, but says that if Americans wore masks at the same rate as Singapore, it could save 79,000 lives.