“We can’t keep pretending this virus is getting better.”

While Americans’ attention is centered on the outcome of the presidential election, the country quietly hit a grim milestone, marking a record-breaking 102,831 new COVID-19 infections in a single day on Wednesday.

The bleak benchmark was expected. In June, with daily cases hovering around 40,000, Dr. Anthony Fauci warned members of the Senate that the country was on track to hit 100,000 daily cases if the nation did not work harder to stop the virus’s spread. He was right.

“I think it’s important to tell you and the American public that I’m very concerned, because it could get very bad,” Fauci told senators more than four months ago.

“We can’t keep pretending this virus is getting better,” he said.

Compared to countries like Japan and China, which each have approximately 100,000 COVID-19 infections in total as of Nov. 5, the United States’ 9.4 million cumulative cases is astronomical.

In addition to sky-high daily infections, key metrics, including rising hospitalizations and testing positivity rates, indicate that the country’s outbreak is worsening, according to an ABC analysis of data from The COVID Tracking Project.

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