The U.S. broke two coronavirus records Wednesday: For the first time, more than 200,000 new cases were reported in a single day, and more than 100,000 COVID-19 patients are hospitalized across the country.
The number of hospitalized patients is nearly double what it was in the spring, during the pandemic's deadly first wave of infections. Philip Landrigan, the director of a global public health program at Boston College, told The New York Times that "any thinking person has to be worried. That we have so many hospitalizations speaks to the fact that we have done a very poor job of controlling this pandemic. It is spreading very rapidly, and in many places, it is basically spreading out of control."
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