"We're certainly not winning the battle against coronavirus," Dr. Francis Collins, the director of the National Institutes of Health, told CNN's Wolf Blitzer Friday.
Currently, more than 3.6 million people in the country have been infected with the virus and 139,266 people have died, according to data from Johns Hopkins University. By August 8, an ensemble forecast published by the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention projects that the death toll will exceed 157,000. The previous forecast, published July 9, projected roughly 147,000 coronavirus deaths by August 1.
"The jurisdictions with the greatest likelihood of a larger number of deaths include: Arizona, Florida, Idaho, Montana, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, the Virgin Islands, and West Virginia," the CDC said on its forecasting website.
In Florida, Broward County is curtailing parties and social gatherings by implementing a nightly curfew, Mayor Dale Holness told reporters. He cited climbing cases, hospitalizations, and diminishing ICU availability as motivation for the decision.
And though the projection for the future looks bleak, Collins said the nation has gotten on top of the virus before and can do it again, if the public finds the motivation again.
"We shouldn't feel hopeless here and we know what works," Collins said. "We know that if we could, as Americans, agree to take those recommendations to heart, that we would keep our masks on when we're outside, we'd stay more than six feet apart from each other and we would avoid indoor gatherings where there's a big chance of spread, we wash our hands and all that, then we could implement what we know has worked," he said.
More support and more controversy over face masks
Local and state leaders have responded to the guidance to wear face coverings to prevent the spread of the virus with both support and opposition.
Science shows that face masks protect the wearer and those around them from coronavirus, and everyone should wear one when around others in public, the CDC said Tuesday.
At least 39 states as well as Washington, DC and Puerto Rico have implemented some type of face mask requirement.
But in Georgia -- which is among the 18 states in the coronavirus "red zone" that should roll back reopening measures, according to an unpublished document prepared for the White House -- the governor has clashed with mayors on such restrictions.
Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp sued Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms on Thursday over her efforts to require face masks in public places. Several other mayors say they are prohibited from enacting the mask requirements supported by their residents because of on order from Kemp.
And in Utah, a public meeting about a mask policy was abruptly canceled when people without face coverings packed the room. The crowd booed when it was called off.
"This is the exact opposite of what we need to be doing," Utah County Commissioner Tanner Ainge said at the meeting room in Provo. "We
