US COVID-19 Cases Top 9 Million With Days Before Election

By Mary Anne R. First Posted: Oct 30, 2020 03:49 AM EDT

The United States has surpassed the nine million record of COVID-19 cases on Thursday.

This includes more than half a million infections in the past week, as COVID-19 continued to spread with only days leading to Election Day.

According to The New York Times, there were disturbing signs seen across the country, suggesting that the worst was yet to come. Many states reported more cases over the past weeks compared to any other time at the start of the pandemic.

In Texas and Wisconsin, COVID-19 patients were sent to field hospitals in El Paso and the Milwaukee suburbs. Growing outbreaks resulted in more new restrictions on businesses in Chicago. No state has reported a sustained decline in COVID-19 cases.

"There is no way to sugarcoat it - we are facing an urgent crisis and there is an imminent risk to you, your family members, your friends, your neighbors," Governor Tony Evers of Wisconsin said in a report.

The country now has an average of over 75,000 new cases daily with the presidential election just days away.

Amanda Simanek, an epidemiologist at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee school of public health, said this surge is larger than any other wave or surges they have seen so far.

Simanek noted that she was worried to see cases increasing as winter season looms closer, prompting people to stay indoors.

Indoor settings, particularly with a poor ventilation system, can help the spread of the virus. Simanek added that this trend might continue if officials do not initiate any effort to suppress the infection down to manageable levels.

COVID-19 Cases in States

More states recorded more COVID-19 cases in just a span of seven days. In some parts of Kansas and Idaho, officials warned that only a few hospital beds remained.

Dr. Larry Chang, an infectious-disease expert at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, was surprised by how quickly it happened.

"I thought we would do a better job as a country getting organized and coming up with evidence-based national plans for mitigating this epidemic. So, while I'm not surprised we reached this number, it happened a lot faster than I thought it would," Chang noted in a report.

Black Americans

As the country struggles to control the COVID-19 cases, Black Americans are among the pandemic's hardest hit.

NBC News report said that the pandemic had worsened the racial inequalities in the job market.

Experts and Black workers said that it would need a much more aggressive approach from the federal government and employers. These measures include overhauling labor laws and removing the racial gap.

Valerie Wilson, an economist at the labor-backed Economic Policy Institute, said that policy response to COVID-19 must acknowledge its effects on many racial groups. She added that no policy is ever race-neutral.

Wilson said that there is going to be a differential impact because society is structured. She added that the Black unemployment rate had been twice the size of the white rate.