US sees milestone trend of 100,000 reported COVID-19 cases daily

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Credit: WINK News.

Over 100,000 coronavirus cases were reported in the United States in a single day Thursday. Of those cases, 6,257 were reported in Florida, the biggest jump since Sept. 1. The country’s numbers are part of a milestone trend of 100,000 new COVID-19 cases reported per day.

We spoke to health experts about the chances of turning this trend around nationwide and in our state.

Angie Mikat is a COVID-19 survivor both mentally and physically.

“It was kind of a weird balance of feeling physically bad but also feeling mentally that guilt. ‘Is there anyone that I could have infected? And oh my gosh, am I a horrible person?’”

Unfortunately, many more people will experience it as well, as we move into the holidays.

“We’re seeing people who are letting people into their bubble, and we’re seeing a lot of family transmissions,” said Dr. David Linder, the director of NCH Healthcare System’s COVID-19 response team.

Lindner said that’s not the only reason our daily positive case rates are rising.

“COVID really depends on population density,” Lindner said. “Southwest Florida is getting busier.”

With more than 6,200 new cases in Florida Thursday, it falls in line with the national numbers, which is a problem.

“We are still on the steep part of this unfortunate rising curve,” Dr. Thomas Tsai, with Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health.

Tsai studies the trends.

“We don’t want to miss a window where the 100,000 cases we’re seeing become 125,000, 150,000, 200,000 cases,” Tsai said. “At that point, we may need a wide scale lockdown.”

Tsai’s model already recommends stay-at-home orders in Southwest Florida. He said, to avoid another lockdown, we need to mask up, practice physical distancing and wash our hands.

Another key component includes scaling up testing by making it more accessible, more affordable and encouraging asymptomatic people to get tested.

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