This is Science Friday. I'm Iroflato. Later in the hour, we'll talk about how the pandemic is affecting kids, plus their parents and caregivers.

But first, this week, the U.S. saw a record number of new daily coronavirus cases, beating out a record from April.

And those cases are spiking significantly in at least seven states, Arizona, Arkansas,

California, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, and Texas. And all of those states have

posted record high numbers of hospitalizations. On Tuesday, 800 people died in the U.S.

That was the first time deaths have increased since June 7.

So what's going on?

What factors are to blame?

Here to dig into the data and share other recent science headlines,

Ryan Mandelbaum, a science writer based in New York.

Welcome back, Ryan.

Always good to be here, Ira. How's everything going?

Ryan, like I said, seven states have record numbers of COVID hospitalizations this week. And just

this Wednesday, the U.S. had a record number of new cases. So it sounds pretty bad out there. How bad is it?

It's bad, Ira, the, you know, I think this is something that we should

have been worried about all along, which is that states are beginning to ease restrictions, but the

first wave of cases never stopped plateauing. So, I mean, we're still in the midst of this strong

first wave. States are opening back up.

People are going back outside and, you know, COVID is already back with a vengeance.

Yeah, that's what Dr. Fauci said. Anthony Fauci said when he was asked about, are we in the second

wave? And he said, we haven't finished the first one. So how are some of these states responding?

I saw at least in Texas, the governor is urging

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