(CNN) Daily coronavirus case numbers in the US are at levels not seen since the summer, and more than a dozen states set record highs for COVID-19 hospitalizations in the past week -- yet more evidence, experts say, of a difficult fall and winter ahead.
The country's seven-day average of new daily cases was above 58,300 as of Monday -- a level not seen since the first week of August, and climbing closer to the summer's peak of 67,200 on July 22.
Average daily new cases have soared 70% since September 12, when the country was at a two-month low of about 34,300.
As cold weather is likely to drive more gatherings indoors, the case level appears too high to avoid dangerous levels of infections and hospitalizations in the coming weeks, experts have said.
"(With) the fact that we're only going to see more transmission occur with indoor air, people inside, this is going to be a rough fall," Michael Osterholm, the director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota, told CNN on Tuesday.
Case rates and hospitalizations are rising especially in the Midwest, Great Plains and parts of the West.
Fourteen states reported their peak COVID-19 hospitalizations in the past week: Alaska, Arkansas, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Montana, Missouri, Nebraska, North Dakota, Oklahoma, South Dakota, Utah, West Virginia and Wisconsin, according to the COVID Tracking Project.
The virus's prevalence is bad enough that the director for the National Institutes of Health says his family won't gather for Thanksgiving this year.
"It is just not safe to take that kind of chance with people coming from different parts of the country of uncertain status," Dr. Francis Collins told National Public Radio's "Morning Edition" on Tuesday. "The problem with this disease is it is so easy for people to be infected and not know it, and then spread it to the ones next to them without realizing it."
"All of this, I'm afraid, happens because we have not succeeded in this country in introducing really effective public health measures," Collins said.
"Simple things that we all could be doing: Wear your mask, keep that 6-foot distance, and don't congregate indoors, whatever you do, and wash your hands. And yet people are tired of it and yet the virus is not tired of us," Collins said.
The country has now topped 220,000 COVID-19 deaths, a number some experts worry may also begin to climb faster.
"The numbers are moving in the wrong direction," Dr. Tom Inglesby, the director of the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security, told CNN Monday night. "We see that happening as the weather gets colder, and it's likely ... to get worse."
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