As Election Day nears and the United States reports its highest daily case totals yet, battleground Great Lakes states that could help decide the presidency are enduring some of the most alarming coronavirus surges.
While the surge quickens and early voting draws to a close, President Trump has continued downplaying the virus and falsely saying the country is “rounding the turn.” And on Thursday, Donald Trump Jr. tried to minimize the death toll, claiming it was “almost nothing” in an appearance on Fox News.
But deaths are beginning to rise across the country, averaging 818 a day over the last week, up nearly 15 percent since Oct. 1, according to a New York Times database. More than 84,000 new cases were announced Saturday in the United States, pushing the seven-day average for new cases above 80,000 for the first time, a rise of 86 percent over the same period.
Deaths are a lagging indicator in the pandemic. First comes a jump in cases — like the one in Minnesota, which this week reported its three highest daily case totals yet — followed by an increase in hospitalizations, as in Michigan, Pennsylvania and Ohio — all states that could tip the balance of the election.
These states are trying to avoid what has happened in Wisconsin, where more than 275 deaths have been reported in the last week. The state is home to nine of the country’s 16 metro areas with the highest rates of recent cases.
In Ohio, hospitalizations have doubled in recent weeks, according to the Covid Tracking Project.
Pennsylvania is averaging more than 2,000 new cases each day, more than twice as many as at the start of October, and hospitalizations have more than doubled.
In the final days before the election, Pennsylvania will be see a number of rallies for each presidential candidate. Mr. Trump, who visited the state on Saturday, was set to host another rally on Monday, and former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. was set to visit on Sunday.
Pennsylvania’s governor, Tom Wolf, urged caution. “This weekend, there will be multiple rallies across the commonwealth at a time when we are seeing a resurgence in cases,” Mr. Wolf said Saturday on Twitter. “We need everyone to take this seriously, especially at a time when our cases are at their highest.”
The surge has been ravaging the middle of the country, where states that had once been considered safely Republican-leaning, like Ohio, Iowa and Texas, are now fiercely competitive. In Iowa, the daily average of new cases increased over 80 percent in the past two weeks, according to a Times database; in Texas, the figure is up about 40 percent over the same period.
Across the country, reports of new cases remain at their highest levels yet. More than 99,000 cases were announced on Friday in the United States, a single-day record, and more than 20 states have set weekly case records recently. On Saturday, officials in Colorado and North Dakota announced daily record numbers of new cases.
On Saturday, 47,374 people were hospitalized with the virus in the United States, according to the Covid Tracking Project, an increase of more than 26 percent over the past two weeks.
Dr. Anthony S. Fauci, the nation’s top infectious disease expert whose criticism of President Trump’s pandemic response has steadily grown in pitch, gave a bleak appraisal of the administration’s coronavirus response in an interview with The Washington Post on Friday.
“You could not possibly be positioned more poorly” heading into the winter, when people will be gathering indoors more, he said.
“We’re in for a whole lot of hurt,” he said in the interview, which was published on Saturday.
And in comments likely to grate on Mr. Trump, who has called Dr. Fauci “a disaster” as he has batted away the doctor’s growing criticism, Dr. Fauci praised the Biden campaign’s approach to the coronavirus, saying it was “taking it seriously from a public health perspective.”
Mr. Trump’s campaign was “looking at it from a different perspective,” he said, which was focused on the economy and reopening the country.
The interview was the latest instance of Dr. Fauci, who was once the face of the government’s response, refusing to join in on the Trump administration’s efforts to insist the virus is under control. His influence has given way to Dr. Scott W. Atlas, Mr. Trump’s pandemic adviser who has questioned mask use and offered a number of other contrarian philosophies.
In the interview, Dr. Fauci directly criticized Dr. Atlas, saying…
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