The United States on Friday reached 60,000 new cases for the first time, and the number ultimately soared to more than 68,000 — setting a single-day record for the seventh time in 11 days, according to a New York Times database.
As outbreaks continued alarming growth in the South and West, officials in two battered states threatened to retreat from reopenings that had followed a national lull in confirmed infections. The new cases reported on Friday shattered the record set the day before — 59,886.
On June 24, the country announced 37,014 new cases, breaking a single-day record that had stood for two months. By Friday, just 16 days later, the peak was at least 84 percent higher.
At least six states reported single-day records for new cases: Georgia, Utah, Montana, North Carolina, Iowa and Ohio. In Georgia and Texas, a governor and a mayor warned that some sort of shutdown might have to be reimposed.
Gov. Greg Abbott of Texas, which reported record numbers of daily cases four times this week, signaled the possibility of a new economic “lockdown” if the state is unable to reduce the caseloads and hospitalizations that have made it one of the country’s leading hot spots in the pandemic.
In a TV interview, Mr. Abbott, a Republican, bluntly predicted that “things will get worse” and said that he may take steps even more drastic than his statewide face-mask requirement, which has angered members of his own party.
“I made clear that I made this tough decision for one reason: It was our last best effort to slow the spread of Covid-19,” he said.
In Georgia, which reported a record of more than 4,000 new cases on Friday, Atlanta officials said they were preparing to shift back to “Phase 1” guidelines, which call for residents to largely stay at home. The majority of Georgia’s cases have been concentrated in the counties making up the Atlanta metropolitan area.
Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms of Atlanta, who said that she had tested positive this week, issued a mask mandate in the city on Wednesday and added further limits on large gatherings. It is unclear when the return to Phase 1 might begin.
Georgia’s growing concerns were also underscored when Gov. Brian Kemp announced that the state was again transforming a convention center in Atlanta into a makeshift medical center as hospitals were filling with patients.
A new global record for daily infections was also reached Friday, as the World Health Organization announced that 228,102 new cases had surfaced around the world, a day after The Times’s database reported 223,116 new cases. It was the fifth time this month that the global daily number had surpassed 200,000.
The other nations showing the largest daily increases in cases were Brazil, Mexico, India and South Africa.
“There is a lot of work still to be done, from countries where there is exponential growth to places that are loosening restrictions and now starting to see cases rise,” Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, the director general of the W.H.O., said at a briefing Friday.
A rising death toll in the United States has raised fears after months of declines. Alabama, Arizona, Florida, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Dakota, Texas and Tennessee all set single-day death records this week. The seven-day death average in the United States reached 608 on Thursday, up from 471 earlier this month, but still a fraction of the more than 2,200 deaths the country averaged each day in mid-April, when the outbreak in the Northeast was at its worst.
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