(CNN)Dr. Anthony Fauci's final pre-Thanksgiving plea is to keep any indoor holiday gatherings as small as possible as the country endures record numbers of Covid-19 hospitalizations and daily cases, he told ABC's "Good Morning America" on Wednesday.
With the US seeing unprecedented numbers of recorded infections now, he said he's worried about how much the virus will spread in holiday celebrations -- and what the pandemic will look like in three weeks when those new infections will have manifested.
"What we don't want to see is yet another surge superposed upon the (current) surge ... which we'll realize three (to) three and a half weeks from now" if people aren't careful, Fauci, director of National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, told ABC.
Public health officials have generally urged Americans to celebrate Thanksgiving only with members of the same household, or at least gather outdoors, to avoid further virus spread. The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention also recommended last week that Americans should not travel for Thanksgiving.
Those warnings come as medical staff around the country say they've struggled to keep up with the surging number of hospital patients.
More than 88,000 Covid-19 patients were in hospitals nationwide on Tuesday, the 15th straight day that figure set a record for the pandemic, according to the COVID Tracking Project.
The federal government's Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) announced a plan Wednesday to deliver acute hospital care at home and relax regulations on surgical care outside of hospitals as part of an effort to increase care capacity as coronavirus hospitalizations surge around the nation.
The centers will make it possible for vulnerable people to access critical non-coronavirus care without entering a setting where they may be exposed to the virus.
"We're at a new level of crisis response with Covid-19," CMS Administrator Seema Verma said in a statement. "With new areas across the country experiencing significant challenges to the capacity of their health care systems, our job is to make sure that CMS regulations are not standing in the way of patient care for Covid-19 and beyond."