This is an archived article and the information in the article may be outdated. Please look at the time stamp on the story to see when it was last updated.

Temperatures are dropping, nights are growing longer, the holidays are nearing, and the science is clear: The pandemic is far from over. A long, dark winter awaits.

The number of new coronavirus cases in the United States each day has ballooned from less than 40,000 in early September to more than 100,000 in early November. The U.S. now confirms more cases in a single day than China has reported since the pandemic began.

“We may be turning a corner, but not in a good way,” said Julie Swann, an expert in healthcare systems at North Carolina State University.

But while a winter surge of COVID-19 is now unavoidable, experts caution that the number of infections and deaths it will bring is not yet written in stone — and its magnitude depends on what we do next. Hundreds of thousands of lives may hang in the balance.

Read the full story on LATimes.com.