Watch live: White House coronavirus task force to address public for first time in months

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The White House coronavirus task force is slated to address the public on Thursday for the first time in months as the Covid-19 outbreak continues to worsen across the United States.

It’s unclear which members of the task force will be there or will speak. Vice President Mike Pence led a meeting of the group earlier Thursday.

The briefing comes just hours after the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention also broke its months-long silence, holding its first news briefing since August. The CDC used that briefing to urge Americans against traveling for Thanksgiving.

While Covid-19 vaccine manufacturers have announced positive steps in recent weeks, the U.S. outbreak continues to deteriorate. The U.S. reported more than 170,100 new cases of the virus on Wednesday, according to data compiled by Johns Hopkins University. That’s the second-highest one-day spike reported to date.

As of Wednesday, more than 79,400 people nationwide were hospitalized with Covid-19, more than at any other point during the pandemic, according to data compiled by the COVID Tracking Project, which is run by journalists at The Atlantic. Hospitals in some parts of the country are overwhelmed, moving to surge capacity to provide care to as many patients as possible.

Earlier this week, NBC News obtained a copy of the latest White House task force report, which warned of “aggressive, unrelenting, expanding broad community spread across the country, reaching most counties, without evidence of improvement but rather, further deterioration.”

Read CNBC’s live updates to see the latest news on the Covid -19 outbreak.