'This will get worse.' A top US official says hospitalizations and deaths will keep climbing as Covid-19 cases explode nationwide

(CNN)An end to the Covid-19 pandemic may now be in sight with more good news on vaccine candidates, but for now "this will get worse," a top US official said Wednesday.

"We have had one million cases documented over the past week, our rate of rise is higher than it even was in the summer, we have hospitalizations going up 25% week over week," Adm. Brett Giroir, assistant secretary for health at the Department of Health and Human Services, told CNN. "There are so many more cases that we have, that deaths are going up."

Covid-19 has killed 250,000 people in the US. That's 10 times the deaths from car crashes in a year

It is what experts have repeatedly warned in the past weeks, as Covid-19 conditions continue to deteriorate across the country: things will get worse before they get better.

Infection numbers in Massachusetts are eight times what they were on Labor Day and hospitalizations have quadrupled. Only 6% of Oklahoma's ICU beds remain available. In Arkansas, more than 1,000 people could lose their lives in the next five weeks, according to the governor. In Illinois, the virus is now the third leading cause of death behind heart disease and cancer

Read more: https://www.cnn.com/2020/11/19/health/us-coronavirus-thursday/index.html