The United States reported 66,784new Covid-19 cases and 477 deaths on Monday, according to Johns Hopkins University.
There are now at least 8,702,750 reportedCovid-19 infections and at least 225,706people have died from the virus in the country.
The totals include cases from all 50 states, the District of Columbia and other US territories, as well as repatriated cases.
The US is reporting the most number of cases the country has seen to date. The seven-day average of daily new cases reached an all-time high of 68,767 on Sunday, according to data from Johns Hopkins University. The previous record of 67,293 was set July 22.
Former Food and Drug Administration Commissioner Dr. Scott Gottlieb said Monday that the country is facing another cycle of the Covid-19 pandemic, and it may be the hardest yet.
"I think we're right now at the cusp of what's going to be exponential spread in parts of the country," Gottlieb said on CNBC's "Squawk Box."
The spike in infections is not from testing -- Trump continues to say (like he did in Pennsylvania today) the spike is because of increased testing. That's either a lie or ignorance. How could it be ignorance at this point? CNN's fact check here.
Stunning admission -- White House chief of staff Mark Meadows said on CNN's State of the Union the White House isn't even trying to contain Covid at this point. They're just waiting for a vaccine. Watch it.
Political timeline -- Reminder: President Donald Trump will be in office for more than two months after Election Day so, regardless of what voters choose, there's unlikely to be forceful Covid leadership at the national level during this fall surge.
So will it be a mandate for masks or a mandate against requiring them? We'll see.
Victoria Premier urges vigilance: "When you let your guard down, this virus will take advantage of you"
From CNN's Angus Watson and Chandler Thornton
Victoria Premier Daniel Andrews leaves after speaking at a news conference on October 26, in Melbourne, Australia. Asanka Ratnayake/Getty Images
The premier of Australia's Victoria state is calling on residents to remain vigilant as the state eases coronavirus restrictions.
Victoria reported no new Covid-19 cases and deaths for the second consecutive day on Tuesday.
When you let your guard down, this virus will take advantage of you," Daniel Andrews said in a news conference Tuesday.
"It's based on where we've come from and where we are now, and the fact that there's always more virus out there than you know. Because not everybody gets tested. And not everybody who does get tested gets tested as quickly as they should," Andrews added.
Tuesday is the first time since March 5 and 6 that the state has reported no new cases for two days in a row, the premier said.
"Masks are an important part of this now. They won't be there forever. They are uncomfortable. It's not a permanent setting, but it will be there for so long as the health team are really clear with us that this does play a role," Andrews said.
People in Melbourne will be allowed to leave their homes but will be restricted to a 25 kilometer (15 mile) limit and only visiting other households once per day.
Two adults can visit another home with children as dependents, Andrews added.
12:01 a.m. ET, October 27, 2020
Here's why you need to wear masks, from Dr. Fauci's team
From CNN Health’s Maggie Fox
Dr. Anthony Fauci gives a thumbs up during a Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee hearing on June 30 in Washington Al Drago - Pool/Getty Images
People are going to have to wear masks until vaccines are widely available -- which means well into next year at the very least, Dr. Anthony Fauci and two top staffers argued Monday.
And people who whip off their masks to speak in public are missing the point, Dr. Andrea Lerner, a clinical associate at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, along with Fauci’s chief of Staff Greg Folkers, wrote in an article in the Journal of the American Medical Association.
They spoke out on defense of cloth masks -- recently attacked by Sen. Rand Paul -- and said taking tests regularly is not enough to absolve people of the need to wear a mask.
Masks block large particles that blast out of people’s mouths and noses.
“However, recent reports indicate that aerosols remaining in the air over longer distances or times also have been involved in SARS-CoV-2 transmission in certain circumstances, often in poorly ventilated enclosed spaces and associated with behaviors such as singing, shouting, or breathing heavily during exercise,” Lerner, Folkers and Fauci wrote. “Light-scattering experiments indicate that 1 minute of loud speaking potentially can generate more than 1,000 virion-containing aerosols that may linger in the air in a closed, stagnant environment,” they added. "Therefore, the commonly observed practice of individuals removing their mask when speaking is not advisable.”
And with winter coming, people will have to wear masks even more, they said.
“Recent evidence suggests that up to 40% to 45% of people infected with SARS-CoV-2 may never be symptomatic but still can transmit the virus,” they added. “Viral spread from people without symptoms may account for more than 50% of transmission events in COVID-19 outbreak.”
Testing can help but is not enough to prove someone is free of infection. “No test is perfect; all have a lower limit of detection for viral material and the potential for false negatives. In addition, the result of a test represents just one point in time and does not indicate an individual’s status outside of the moment the specimen was collected,” they noted.
And cloth masks can work just fine. “Surgical masks can reduce respiratory virus shedding in exhaled breath, and the filtering efficacy of some materials used in cloth masks may approach that of surgical masks,” they noted.
10:27 p.m. ET, October 26, 2020
British study shows evidence of waning immunity to Covid-19
From CNN's Jen Christensen
A study of hundreds of thousands of people across England suggests immunity to the coronavirus is gradually wearing off -- at least according to one measure.
Researchers who sent out home finger-prick tests to more than 365,000 randomly selected people in England found a more than 26% decline in Covid-19 antibodies over just three months.
"We observe a significant decline in the proportion of the population with detectable antibodies over three rounds of national surveillance, using a self-administered lateral flow test, 12, 18 and 24 weeks after the first peak of infections in England," the team wrote in a pre-print version of their report, released before peer review. "This is consistent with evidence that immunity to seasonal coronaviruses declines over 6 to 12 months after infection and emerging data on SARS-CoV-2 that also detected a decrease over time in antibody levels in individuals followed in longitudinal studies."
The study was published Monday by Imperial College London and Ipsos MORI, a market research company. At the beginning of the study, in June, 6% of those who took the tests had IgG antibody responses to the coronavirus, they reported. By September, just 4.4% of them did. For health care workers, the rates stayed about the same.
Antibodies are the proteins your body naturally generates to fight infection. IgG are one type -- the tests were not designed to detect other types of antibodies. Other research teams have found that other types of antibodies may persist longer than IgG does.
The results also confirm earlier studies that showed that people who did not have symptoms of Covid-19 are likely to lose detectable antibodies sooner rather than those who had more severe infections.
Australia's Victoria state reports no new Covid-19 cases for the second day in a row
From CNN's Chandler Thornton
People cross a pedestrian bridge in the Melbourne suburb of St. Kilda on October 26, as Australian health officials reported no new coronavirus cases or deaths in Victoria state. William West/AFP/Getty Images
Australia's Victoria state reported no new Covid-19 infections in the past 24 hours for the second consecutive day, the Department of Health and Human Services said in a tweet Tuesday.
Monday was the first time since June 8 that Victoria has reported no new cases, statistics from the DHHS have shown. The total number of Covid-19 cases in Victoria remains at 20,343, and the total death toll at 817.
The remarkable milestone of no new cases comes just months after Victoria state Premier Daniel Andrews declared a "state of disaster" to stem an outbreak that saw as many as 725 people in the state test positive for the virus in a single day.
The steep decline in cases has allowed the government to lift major social distancing measures that have been in place for weeks, including moving the state capital, Melbourne, out of lockdown beginning Wednesday.
9:27 p.m. ET, October 26, 2020
Minnesota reports three Covid-19 outbreaks related to Trump campaign events in September
From CNN's Nadia Kounang
The Minnesota Department of Health is reporting three Covid-19 outbreaks related to Trump campaign events held in the state in September.
At least 23 cases have been traced to outbreaks occurring at rally events in Bemidji on September 18, a speech held by Vice President Mike Pence on September 24 in Minneapolis, and another rally held by President Donald Trump on September 30 in Duluth, the department said in an email to CNN.
The US is close to having "exponential spread" in some areas, former FDA official says
From CNN's Holly Yan, Madeline Holcombe and Theresa Waldrop
The United States is facing another cycle of the Covid-19 pandemic, and it may be the hardest yet, former Food and Drug Administration Commissioner Dr. Scott Gottlieb said Monday.
"I think we're right now at the cusp of what's going to be exponential spread in parts of the country," Gottlieb said on CNBC's "Squawk Box." "If we took aggressive steps right now, we could potentially forestall the worst of it, but we're not going to do that," because there's a lot of fatigue and "policy resistance to taking strong action," he said. "We really have two or three months of the acute phase of this pandemic to get through," he said. "This is going to be the hardest phase, probably."
Worst number of cases yet: That's as the country continues to report the most number of cases we've seen to date. The seven-day average of daily new cases reached an all-time high of 68,767 on Sunday, according to data from Johns Hopkins University. The previous record of 67,293 was set July 22.
"Unfortunately, I think the statement about 'new record' is going to be repeated over and over again in the days and weeks to come," said Dr. Ashish Jha, dean of the Brown University School of Public Health.
"I expect that those numbers will continue to climb. Hospitalizations are going to continue to climb."
