As Thanksgiving week draws to an end, more experts are warning the Covid-19 pandemic will likely get much worse in the coming weeks before a possible vaccine begins to offer some relief.

More than 205,000 new cases were reported Friday -- which likely consists of both Thursday and Friday reports in some cases, as at least 20 states did not report Covid-19 numbers on Thanksgiving.

The US has now reported more than 100,000 infections every day for 25 consecutive days, with a daily average of more than 166,000 across the last week -- almost 2.5 times higher than the summer's peak counts in July.

The number of Covid-19 patients in US hospitals is just off record levels: more than 89,800 on Friday, only a few hundred lower than the peak set a day earlier, according to the COVID Tracking Project.

And daily Covid-19 deaths in the US have been heading up. The daily average across seven days was 1,477 on Friday. But more than 2,100 deaths were reported on each of the two days prior to Thanksgiving, the first time that level was crossed on consecutive days since late April.