With the presidential election days away, the country is now averaging more than 75,000 new cases daily, the worst stretch of the pandemic by that measure. Deaths, which lag behind cases, remain far below their spring levels but have ticked upward to about 780 each day. More cases have been identified in the United States than in any other country, though some nations have higher per capita infection rates.
“This surge is larger than any other wave or surges that we’ve seen yet,” said Amanda Simanek, an epidemiologist at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee school of public health, who…