Nation records highest single-day death toll since April 30 with 2,597 fatalities

New cases per capita are shown on a gruesome map in the report, in which nearly the entire U.S. appears as one giant hotspot, with 19 states including North Dakota, South Dakota, Wyoming and New Mexico, ranking as top areas of concern after reporting at least 500 new cases per every 100,000 residents last week. 

A second map shows 27 states, including the Dakota, New Mexico and Montana, suffered more than 100 deaths per 100,000 residents last week.  

It comes after Dr Scott Atlas, President Trump's divisive appointee to the task force resigned on Monday - the same night that the president hosted the first of his 20 planned lavish Christmas parties, where Trump teased a 2024 election run in front of a crowd of mostly maskless guests. 

The White House task force went so far as to tell local health officials that they 'must' alert the public of the risk of coronavirus directly if state officials don't enact policies and recommendations to protect people from coronavirus, effectively directing health officials to go over the heads of other government authorities. 

On Tuesday, U.S. recorded its highest single-day death toll since April 30 with 2,597 fatalities, according to a DailyMail.com analysis of data from Johns Hopkins University. 

For the fourth day in a row, the number of Americans hospitalized for COVID-19 hit a record-high on Tuesday, with 98,691 people getting inpatient treatment, data from the Covid Tracking Project show.  

'I have no doubt that we're going to see a climbing death toll...and that's a horrific and tragic place to be,' Josh Michaud, associate director of global health policy at the Kaiser Family Foundation, told the AP. 

'It's going to be a very dark couple of weeks.'

Climbing deaths and hospitalizations in the U.S. underscore the urgent need to get a coronavirus vaccine approved - but Food and Drug Administration (FDA) advisors aren't scheduled to decide whether to give emergency authorization to Pfizer's jab until next week, despite the shot getting the green light from officials in the U.K.

In the meantime, CDC officials shortened quarantine times for people who have been exposed to coronavirus from two weeks to seven days with a negative test or 10 days without a test - but warned Americans not to travel for the upcoming holidays in a feeble attempt to prevent another 'superspreading' event after Thanksgiving.  

The White House coronavirus task force's latest report warns that 'the COVID threat to all Americans is at an historic high' as it reveals that 19 US states saw more than 500 new cases for every 100,000 residents last week 

• Last week, the U.S. also more new cases of coronavirus in U.S. nursing homes than have been recorded since the spring

  The entire U.S. is on high alert over coronavirus, with the White House coronavirus task force issuing one of its strongest warnings yet, that 'the COVID risk to all Americans is at an historic high,' in its latest situation report to states. 

  'We are in a very dangerous place,' the task force said in the report, sent to states Tuesday, and obtained by NBC News. 

  The report is sent every week to U.S. states and regularly paints a much darker picture of the coronavirus crisis in the U.S. than is presented by the public faces of President Trump's task force. It warned that the post-Thanksgiving surge of infections and hospitalizations threatens to 'compromise COVID patient care, as well as medical care overall.' 

A second map from the White House report shows 27 states, including the Dakota, New Mexico and Montana, suffered more than 100 deaths per 100,000 residents last week