♪ if it's monday, trump is trailing, the virus is raging, another outbreak has hit the white house. and the president's chief of staff is trying to clarify comments suggesting we cannot control this pandemic. plus, with time running out, the president is holding three rallies today in pennsylvania. what it says about his campaign's narrowing path to 270, amid the latest batch of battleground polls. and after a weekend of intense debate, judge amy coney barrett

is on the verge of a historic senate confirmation to the supreme court as early as tonight. ♪ welcome to monday. it's "meet the press" daily. i'm steve kornacki in for chuck todd at nbc news election headquarters in new york. and we are now just eight days away from the presidential election. donald trump is trailing in the polls. a record-setting 55 million plus votes have already been cast early in this election. and the coronavirus pandemic is flaring up yet again. the number of new cases confirmed in the united states is now hitting record levels, hospitalizations are going up around the country. and deaths have begun to tick up as well. and the white house is walking back comments made by chief of staff mark meadows yesterday

that to some signal the administration had all but given up when it comes to trying to control the surge. >> we're not going to control the pandemic. we are going to control the fact that we get vaccines. therapeutics and other mitigations -- >> why are we going to control the pandemic? >> because it is a contracagiou virus just like -- >> when we look at this, we're going to defeat the virus. we're not going to control it. we can try to contain it as best we can. if you look at full context what i was talking about, we need to make sure we have therapeutics and vaccines. >> no, the opposite. absolutely the opposite. we've done an incredible job. we're doing a great job. we are absolutely rounding the corner, other than the fake news wants to scare everybody. we are absolutely rounding the corner. >> meantime, president trump is

barn storming the country maintaining as you heard it there his insistence when it comes to the virus, the country is turning the corner. >> we're rounding the turn. you know, all they want to talk about is covid. by the way, on november 4th, you won't be hearing so much about it, covid, covid, covid. covid. today, let's talk about covid. >> this country and their reporting systems are really not doing it right. if somebody has a really bad heart and they're close to death, even if they're not, if they have a very bad heart and they get covid. they put it down to covid. other countries put it down to a heart. so, we have to be -- we're going to start looking at things, you know, they have things a little backwards. >> they keep talking about cases, you know why we have cases so much. that's all we do is test. if we cut our testing down in half, they would say -- well, they wouldn't say that. but cases would go down. >> the white house is also making clear that vice president mike pence will not limit his

own campaign travel. nor limit any aspects of his public schedule, despite at least five people close to him testing positive for the virus. joining me now from pennsylvania where president trump is scheduled to speak later this hour is nbc's carol lee. nbc's mike memoli is following the biden campaign in wilmington, delaware. and nbc's ali velshi is talking to voters in the all-important state of north carolina. thanks for being with us. carol, let me start with you, where the president is expected to be, shortly. pennsylvania obviously so critical. we've been talking about this to his electoral map calculations. remembering the closing days of the 2016 campaign, and in those final days, we saw a different, i would say, more subdued, more stick to the script version of donald trump in the final days of 2016. what are we seeing on the campaign trail in the final days of this campaign? >> reporter: well, if anything,

you're seeing a kind of defiant president trump, where his argument in allentown, and he'll presumably make a similar argument when he gets here. and then he goes on to martinsburg, pennsylvania. and it is essentially that we've been counted out before. we're going to win this anyways. this is the same narrative according to the president that we heard in 2016. and he's telling his supporters not to listen to it. not to get complacent and not sit home and make sure they get out and vote. so that's really the message the president is bringing to the campaign trail today at these three stops. you know, pennsylvania is a critical state for the president. he got off the plane here in pennsylvania and said that he feels good about pennsylvania. he thinks he's ahead enough to not worry about it. but they are worried about it. the campaign really wants to hold on to pennsylvania. you only need to look at the president's schedule, his surrogates' schedule, first lady

melania trump will make her debut on the 2020 campaign trail in pennsylvania this week. it's a real battle for the president for the 20 electoral votes. and also just anywhere across the country and all of these battleground states. he's trying to energize his voters. go there in person, that's the strategy. encouraging them to get out early, get out on election day and help him win another term. obviously, the polls showing that the president is at a bit of a disadvantage here. but he's trying to make the case, and he's not. and it's actually looking better for him than the polling are showing at the moment, we'll have to see about that. but in the meantime, he's not wasting anytime from now until election day and expected to do several events a day from now until the election. >> and, carol, you mentioned melania trump, the first lady, heading to the campaign trail.

there's also the question of vice president in proximity to people, his chief of staff, most notably, who have now tested positive for the coronavirus. but he's continuing to campaign. he's not going to quarantine, he's not going to isolate. how is the campaign, how are the folks around the president's team explaining this decision? >> reporter: well, they're essentially saying that the vice president is an essential worker. that's how they're casting the vice president. as somebody who is an essential worker. and that it's essential for americans to get out there and vote. and that's what he's out there encouraging the country to do. they're saying that he is following cdc guidelines in terms of wearing a mask while he's out. although he takes it off to do his events. but normally, if somebody were exposed in the way the vice president potentially has been, specifically, with the direct contact through his chief of staff mark short who tested positive, typically, a person would then quarantine for 14

days. the vice president so far has chosen not to do that. and they say he's going to stick with his schedule and hit the campaign trail. and i think that really underscores, steve, that the trump needs as many as they have out there in the country making the case for people to turn out and vote for the president. >> all right. carol lee until littiz, pennsylvania. mike memoli, you go from carol lee, to rallies happening all over the place, very different approach to the campaigning, to the closing of this campaign from joe biden. are we going to see him -- i guess, when are we next going to see him? and how much of him are we going to see in the coming days? >> yeah, steve, we do expect to see joe biden at some point today here in his hometown of wilmington. but notably, not in a battleground state with just eight days left to go until election day. and i feel like we've spent so

much time over the course of this general election campaign talking about how joe biden has managed to campaign or not in the coronavirus era. doing things virtually, doing things in person some combination of the two. over the weekend, i sort of crunched the numbers and looked at where he's been since the democratic national convention in august, usually, a kickoff to the stretch run. and it's interesting what that tells us about biden's ability to campaign and how they view the electoral map. the number one state, in terms of a destination for joe biden, by far, pennsylvania, where carol is today. and that's ten visits since the democratic national convention. the biden not just the closest geographically, but what biden's case in the primary and now the general election electorally as well, he feels a real connection to that part of the country and the type of voters we see there. next on the list is florida, where we expect to see him on thursday. that will be his fourth visit

since the convention. obviously a battleground but a place they feel they can win back and put him back in the blue column. and on election night giving us a window of where this election is heading. but then we see him heading to georgia for the first time that the democrats haven't won since 1992. they have a chance to win on the presidential level but senate races as well. the biden campaign when they first started laying out the general election strategy, a map they thought was realistic for them. they talked of 17 states, of those 17 states there are some that biden hasn't been to. when you look at him going to georgia tomorrow, and kamala harris making a return visit to arizona this week, this is a campaign that is signaling that they feel like they have multiple paths to 270, in all tiers of battleground states, where the trump campaign is very much in their view playing defense, steve.

>> from mike memoli in wilmington. let's go to ali velshi in north carolina. what a beautiful backdrop, ali, in asheville, inconorth carolin one of the great spots this time of year. talk about what you're hearing. because we've got this -- it was a long exchange in that second trump and biden debate over the issue of the coronavirus. i think it exposed a pretty clear philosophical divide in terms of how they're talking about it. you're talking to voters in north carolina about the coronavirus. what are you hearing? >> reporter: a couple things. first i'm going to start with what's in the bottom right corner of the screen. you can see the dow continuing to shrink. that's on coronavirus fears the idea that it's spiking around the world. spain and italy put in lockdown. now, you come back to north carolina where it is spiking. this is one of those place that is a coronavirus hot spot. and every week, steve, i've been talking to different groups of voters in different parts of the country. when i was in arizona, it was

more about coronavirus. in michigan, more about trade. and it is all about of course here. every single one of my panelists, including didn't matter whether they were democrats or republicans voting for trump. voting itself is not a hard thing to do in north carolina. they've actually got that part under control. but this is a divided state. joe biden leading a little bit at the moment. let's listen a bit to what my panelists told me about their fears about coronavirus. >> there needs to be a national leader who recognizes seriously that this is -- this is happening. that this is not a joke. it's not going to go away. we don't need to ignore it. we don't need to go into the white house or however, and say, well, i'm fine, everybody else is fine. that is not true, okay? and it's not realistic. and there's so many people who

have lost relatives and friends and who know and understand what this is. it's unempathetic, and actually, it's cruel in many ways. and so that would need to stop. and also, i think that we know that closing down parts of the economy have to happen. >> you have a virus that spreads that's very dangerous. but this virus is not going to go away. just like the flu didn't go away. >> but the guy you're voting for says it's going to go away. in fact, he said it again today, he said it's just going to go away. >> it's going to go -- i don't believe it's going to go away. >> that's an interesting point because it's killed $225,000 people. >> right. >> and the guy you are going to cast a ballot for in the next nine days says it's just going to go away. the media is freaking out about it, it's not a thing. how could you reconcile that? >> well, if you realize we have vaccines on the way. the vaccines are coming and it's

going to help for it to go away. honestly speaking we can say the same thing for the flu but it's never going away. we have to deal with the virus the way it is today. if we shut down the economy and say we're going to shut it down until it goes away, it's never going to happen. >> this is very important for me. i don't believe masks should be an individual choice. i believe it should be mandated. there should be a federal and state law, to suggest that we are should be wearing masks at all times. we wear seat belts every day when we drive because it saves lives when we drive. and not to be in an accident. masks saves lives. >> and, steve, once you get past the views and npopinions on wha joe biden and donald trump need to do on coronavirus, the underlying issue is the economy, right? everybody is concerned how the economy is going to play out. i've heard typically from my panel from republicans that democrats are trying to shut the

economy down. that the white house has no plan here it comes on stark relief on this very day when we're seeing a surge in cases around the world. a surge in cases in the united states, new records in cases, new numbers it deaths, now that we've seen better rules than here in the united states, nor closures. and that again is what affecting investors right now. that's why we're seeing the selloff. investors are saying, hey, this is really real. this is coming back for a third surge. despite what donald trump says, we don't have a plan or a solution. and the economic hit is going to continue well into 2021. steve. >> ali, i'm curious, whether it's in north carolina or other places that you've been visiting we keep getting these statistics when it comes to early voting. records being shattered. >> reporter: yeah. >> there's a possibility the turnout in this presidential election could exceed 150 million. it's never approached that number before. we could be shattering all sorts of records.

does it feel that way on the ground when you're traveling? >> reporter: yeah. >> does it feel like people are plugged into this in a way they haven't before? >> reporter: it has, in last couple of weeks, in north carolina, they've got weekend voting here. you can go to an app. they've got a good record of being able to do early voting and mail-in vote north carolina income. so, people are really doing it. and i have not, for several weeks, encountered anybody who has not made a plan to vote. it feels that it's actually on in north carolina. like a lot of these swing states, steve, folks believe that their vote is important. 55% of americans typically vote in elections. i think we'll see a much higher number this time around but is this not a place that people think there vote doesn't matter. >> particularly on election night, we're going to get a lot of votes in. ali velshi in north carolina.

mike memoli in wilmington, north carolina. carol lee where the president is about to be in littitz, pennsylvania. ahead, eight days away from the election right now, the paths to victory are getting smaller and narrower for president trump. we're going to show you what that looks like on the big board. plus, a top adviser from the trump campaign is going to join us. and later, the covid crisis stretching far beyond america's rural areas, hitting hard, too, leave be health care workers overwhelmed. and some hospitals, at their breaking point. this administration and senate republicans want to overturn laws requiring insurance companies to cover people with pre-existing conditions. they're rushing a lifetime appointment to the supreme court to change the law through the courts. 70% of americans want to keep protections for pre-existing conditions in place. tell our leaders in washingtn to stop playing games with our healthcare.

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polls just came out, just came out. let me tell you the real polls, okay? because we feel we're winning almost easily. we're leading in nevada. that's nice. way up in texas. in ohio, we're way up. by four or five points. in florida, we have it down as

four up in florida. you don't hear these numbers, right? we're nicely up four up in georgia. in arizona we're nicely up, we're winning big in iowa, but i should be for what i do for the farmers. in the national poll, we're leading against sleepy joe biden. >> all right. that's president trump there. that's how he looks at the polls. he says, you know what we're going to do, we're going to take all of the polls that are out there right now, nationally, and in all of the different battleground states, he's talking about. we're going to show you the averages. we're going to show you the polling averages. give you a sense when you put all of the polls together what does that picture look like. so, first of all, this is what the national picture looks like the national head-to-head horse race, joe biden versus donald trump. the average of the polls right now puts joe biden ahead by eight points. this has been a pretty consistent lead for biden. we've seen summer and fall a high single-digit lead. there was a point there after

the first debate it got up into double digits. low double digits. sits at eight points on average in the national polls a little over a week to election day. you remember, four years ago, donald trump trailed hillary clinton in the national polling average pretty much throughout the campaign. clinton generally led. how would it look at this same point? this was also eight days before the election in 2016. clinton led trump in the average. though, you know, the margin was smaller, it was basically three points then versus eight points now. remember, it was around this time in the 2016 campaign when james comey then the fbi director came out and said, hey, reopening the email investigation. that race between clinton and trump in that final week or so it got close in the national polling average. close enough that donald trump was able to pull things out in the electoral college. so, we say, let's take a look at the electoral college and the battleground states. let's look at them until three groups here.

first of all, these are the three battleground states that donald trump won by the narrowest margins in 2016. less than a point in michigan, pennsylvania, wisconsin. all three of these states had not gone for a republican since the 1980s. if you take the average of the polls in these three states, biden by eight in michigan, biden over a touch and pennsylvania and by michigan. if you took those three states all off of trump's 2016 total, he'den under 270. so that's one layer of swing states there. the next, florida, arizona, north carolina. these were trump victories by more than a point, less than five in 2016. a little bit more of a buffer in these states for trump than the first three i showed you. here's the polling now. you've got biden leads. the biden leads are smaller than in pennsylvania, michigan and wisconsin.

and then the next tier here, these are states that trump won in 2016 generally by a high single-digit margin. georgia, ohio, texas, iowa. what does the polling look like now? narrow margins here. georgia and ohio, texas, a little buffer there. slight there on average for joe biden. again, you take them on three theirs there. if biden goes 3 for 3 in the first group he may not need any more states. the president basically playing defense in an awful lot of states right now when it comes to the electoral college. that's what the polling averages say right now, with me to talk more about this with the president and what the path looks like in the final week. jason miller, senior adviser to the trump campaign. jason, thank you for joining me. jason, i'm going to actually call that screen right back there and put it up for everybody to see. these three states, michigan, pennsylvania, wisconsin. i mentioned if donald trump

loses all three of these states he goes under 270. which one of these are you going to win? >> well, we think we're going to bin all three, steve. things are looking pretty good. all three are a jump ball. new polling from pennsylvania from insider advantage actually shows president trump leading in the state of pennsylvania. we think michigan is closing strong. we think wisconsin is closing strong. one other state that you don't have up there, steve that we did not win in 2016, only lost by a point and a half, minnesota, this is a state that the president would be out once, if not twice. added more money to the tv buy in minnesota truly up to the same level. they have the same number of electorals there as wisconsin. that's another rout, possibly. another state, steve, nevada, this is a state we believe we're leading. there's also a michigan/ nevada pathway. there are two states there, nevada, minnesota that we lost last night, we're aggressively

playing in and winning and this week they can give us additional routs. >> i'm curious, when you look at this, as we play that clip, he thinks you're going to win this easily. do you think the polls, when you lay out that electoral college pathway there, do you think the polls right now -- we just put the averages up there. this is the totality of everything, are they missing your voters in these states? or is it your belief that in the last week, you're going to get people to change their minds? >> well, i think it's largely that they're missing our voters. and if they have the waiting line. at this point, everything has to be a likely voter if you're doing any sort of polling. april registered voter or a registered adult, any of these types of categories don't work this close to an election. it has to be likely voters. steve, i'd also point out when you talk about the national polls, you know this, there's so much of a wasted vote for democrats than republicans. democrats run upstates like

california and new york. republicans run upstates like alabama and kansas. and the s essay they did after 2016. as you look at the states, wisconsin, michigan, pennsylvania, we see a lot of our voters, people coming to the rallies that the president has routinely getting upwards of a quarter or a third of folks who are attending who didn't even vote in 2016. there was a big unknown voter. a silent voter for trump in 2016. we see a lot of that in our polling now. >> you make an interesting point there, this idea that, hey, democrats could run up huge margins. california, new york, other blue states and pad that national popular vote. how much do you think democrats could win the national popular vote by, with you still winning the electoral college. how high do you think that popular margin could get for the democrats? >> it could be -- it could be a sizable number. but i don't want to speculate on

that. i think i'm a little more confident where we're going to get to on the electoral college which is what the constitution says and how the framers went ahead and set it up. and as secretary clinton last time maybe followed that route as opposed to going to some of the wrong states maybe she would have done a lot better. we think we have a good strategy. that's why you see the president spending a lot of time in the upper midwest states. north carolina, georgia, florida. steve, one other critical point, you mentioned this in the last segment chatting with ali about the early voting. a real critical key here is democrats' absentee return rate in 2020 is a lower percentage than 2016. i think a lot of folks conflate the unsolicited mass mail absentee ballots as being a return ballot. there's an additional step there, folks have to turn it and send it back. democrats are not returning the ballots at the rate they need to. that's kind of the secret that in politics that a lot of folks

in the media aren't catching on to, democrats are likely can balancizing their likely voters at the early stage but they're not getting so much of the new voters or folks that they need to win this so we're pretty energized and we like the returns. >> i want to put something up from the msnbc poll, it caught my attention. we ask this question all time about presidents, senators, candidates for office, everybody in politics. do you have a positive or negative view of that person. you can see them up on the screen, trump is 42% positive, 53% negative. then you look at joe biden, he's actually a point more positive than negative. 43% positive, 42% negative. that caught my eye because i remember one of the dynamics of the 2016 campaign was how unpopular donald trump's opponent was, hillary clinton. you got toee election day 2016, her unfavorable number, her

negative number was 55%. and here's joe biden, you know, about a week or two before election day 2020 sitting at more positive than negative. is that a key difference here? do voters not feel as negatively about biden as they did about hillary clinton? >> well, it's a different election. and the coalitions are different. i would point out also, steve that those are national numbers as well. when we look at the battleground states we have much better parity on the phased, unfazed. to use that term. the polling in 2020, president trump is poised to receive the greatest amount of black support by republican in modern era. >> when you say the greatest amount of black support for a republican in the modern era, first of all, no republican has been over 20% of that vote since 1960. the high water mark in that period is gerald ford in 1976 at 17%. what are you talking about as a number there? >> again, i think that president

trump will be in double digits with african-american voters. i think with african-american men in particular, the president will be north of 20%. i think he's going to have some really good support in the black community. and same thing with latino voters. and so there's a real distrust, i think, with joe biden. there's some serious issues, that's why you see the biden campaign sending former president obama to solid blue parts of states to try and turn out democratic voters. it used to always with former president obama you'd send him to the swing parts of the states. make the bucks county in pennsylvania. now, what the biden campaign is trying to do is energize the base. steve two polling points, as you look through and you talked about this on a number of shows yourself, the enthusiasm gap between president trump and joe biden. folks who are voting for president trump, usually about 3 to 1.

they have an advantage to actually support trump. and joe biden, they're voting for biden because they don't like president trump. this makes a big difference as folks decide whether or not to stand in line for an hour or two on election day. trump supporters, it doesn't matter if they're snowing, raining, what's going on, they're going to be there. there's a big question on the biden end. i think that's actually who's going to show up. i think this is where historic ground play comes into play. >> jason, from the trump campaign, thank you. ahead, the supreme court is about to have its newest justice confirmed in presumably a number of hours. the latest from capitol hill as the judges will confirm judge amy coney barrett. that is next. power! wow. that will save me lots of money.

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tell me more. it's for people 45 plus at average risk for colon cancer, not high risk. false positive and negative results may occur. ask your prescriber or an online prescriber if cologuard is right for you. i'll get on it! that's a step in the right direction. welcome back. we are only a few hours away now from the confirmation of a new supreme court justice. this is as the senate prepares to vote to confirm judge amy coney barrett this evening. the white house plans to swear her in an event right after. but the status of judge barrett's confirmation may be the only safe thing about tonight's proceedings, after five people in vice president mike pence's orbit tested positive for covid-19 this weekend, it sun clear if pence is going to preside over the confirmation as originally planned. the white house plans to hold another event for judge barrett,

even though her nomination ceremony may have been the spreading event that infected many within the trump administration and that landed the president in the hospital. nbc's garrett haake is on capitol hill on what to expect from the proceedings. let me start right there, the vice president has that role if he so chooses to preside over the senate. indications were until recently that mike pence would be there. is he still going to be? >> reporter: we're still trying to track that, down. there's reason for mike pence to be here. there's no reason that this would have to cast a coasvote. the reality is he could just as good a view of the proceedings watching at home on c-span. so far, no official confirmation from the vice president's office

or of his attendance or lack thereof. >> and when this emerged a couple weeks ago, this looked like it was the showdown of the defining campaign event. it's sort of ending on a much quieter note than folks expected coming in. i know democrats boycotted that senate judiciary committee vote. what are we expecting from them. >> reporter: steve, there's still time to go but i thought this was going to be one to go down as a shattering confirmation process. because of the superspreader of her event announcing the nomination, the president getting sick kind of took all of the air out of the balloon in terms of the political implications of the nomination. as it appears right now, amy coney barrett is going to pass,

susan collins confirmed she does intend to vote against judge barrett's nomination. that makes this the most partisan nomination in modern supreme court history. but it seems to have caught fire on the campaign trail at least in the way republicans were expecting. democratic voters as you know as well as anybody, don't typically vote on or care about the voting of the judges. have rallied around this nomination fight just as much as republicans have. >> garrett, if it's any consolation, i was with you there. i also thought this was going to be higher volume than it turn out to be. garrett haake, thank you. next, the u.s. hits the highest seven-day average in covid cases ever. we're going to talk to a doctor on the front lines of a growing hospital. right after this.

welcome back. as the white house battling a

second coronavirus outbreak in administrati administration officials signal there may be more to control the virus the u.s. is sounding a new alarm. 42 states seeing an increase in the last two weeks. the national average is at a had you record high with nearly 70,000 cases. here are the facts you need to know, months of mixed measuring and political tests have taken a toll on staffers. six current and former cdc staffers tell nbc news that morale at the agency is, quote, toxics. astrazeneca says the vaccine with oxford also reports adverse effects appear to be lower in older adults. el paso, texas, has imposed a curfew, as it recorded more than

300% increase in hospitalizations in less than a month. local officials are urging residents to stay home for at least two weeks and turning a convention center into a field hospital. in utah hospital officials are warning they're on the brink of having to ration care, as as they fill up, and the state shatters new records for cases. at least two hospitals have opened overflow icus and the state is opening a field hospital. nbc's megan fitzgerald is in salt lake city, utah. megan, alarming headlines and numbers there. what's happening on the ground in utah? >> reporter: steve, absolutely. a desperate situation here in utah, no doubt about it, as covid-19 continues to surge here. on friday, we saw record numbers of covid cases confirmed in the state. in just one day, they were looking at nearly 2,000 cases. we're talking about hospitals that are overrun.

icu units that are either at or approaching capacity fast. as you mentioned a field hospital was -- it was constructed. it was ready to go in the spring. but they never utilized it, although that could certainly be a possibility as this pandemic rages on. but health care workers will tell you, it's not just about adding these beds. it's about having proper medical personnel to be able to provide the necessary care to these patients and every day that gets harder and harder. take a listen to what one icu nurse had to say earlier. >> i can tell you personally that i have been at the bedside of multiple patients of covid-19. and been the last person that they saw. the last person to look at them in their eyes before they died. a video camera is not adequate for the family members to see them like that. they're unrecognizable sometimes with the tubes and cords. i have to do this sometimes multiple times a day. i have seen nurses walk out and

say, i can't do this. but we have to. who else is going to do it? >> reporter: yeah, you can certainly feel the desperation in her -- hear it in her voice, and certainly in her eyes there as she talked about that. health care workers, joining state officials, as well as the governor, pleading with the public to wear masks. to limit those gatherings of ten or less. and to practice social distancing. steve. >> all right, meagan fitzgerald inlake city, thank you for that. turning to another part of the country where health officials are sounding the alarm. dr. alex garza is the chief medical officer for the regional hospital based out of st. louis. he's also head of the st. louis metropolitan pandemic task force. doctor, thank you for joining us. just, if you would, give us a sense what you are seeing right now. >> yeah. thanks for having me, steve.

so, it's certainly, i think the word that we would say, it's very challenging right now. so, you see those stories coming out of el paso and utah. and those are really heartbreaking stories. here in st. louis, we're seeing similar trend lines. we're not quite at where they are in utah or in el paso. but we don't want to be where they are. so, we're seeing increasing number of admissions to our facilities. and numbers that we haven't seen since early on in the pandemic, when we had that first wave. but in addition to that, we have pretty high volume right now of all of our non-covid patients, too. and so, you have this scenario where the hospitals were already full. and now, you're layering in covid patients on top of that, and it's creating a tremendous amount of stress for the health care systems here. >> i'm curious what your finding what the new cases that you're seeing. where are the -- where is the transmission happening? do you have a sense here of where the spikes are coming

from? >> mostly at the community level. and so, it depends on, you know, if it's gatherings that are occurring. if it's people that aren't adhering to public health measures such as mask wearing. when we look at around the st. louis metropolitan area where the admissions are coming from, during the initial wave, it was mostly in the urban parts, st. louis city, st. louis county, places like that. now what we saw is a shift where most of the admissions are coming from the outlying areas, so, the more rural areas which is primarily where all of the cases have been growing in missouri. but the thing now is, in addition to those cases, now we are starting to see that increase in the urban cases as well. and so, it's really putting a tremendous amount of stress on the health care system when we're seeing cases and admissions coming from throughout the area, really, from throughout the state now. >> you say it's putting stress on the health care system.

how much more stress can it handle before you start getting into the kind of situation we were just hearing about? >> yeah, that's a great question. you know, right now, we're operating at really either near capacity or at capacity. i know some of our hospitals are actually over capacity. and so, as part of the pandemic task force, the health care systems here have been having those discussions, much like being mentioned in some of the other stories where we're talking about, how do we decrease our elective cases. what other steps do we need to do in order to create capacity. but i do want to stress one thing, and that is, it doesn't matter how many beds we have, if we don't have the staff to take care of patients. it doesn't matter if i have 100 beds or 10 beds, if i only have staff to take care of 10 patients. that is really what we're finding is a challenging part right now. the workforce is just -- they're overworked. they're demoralized. it's tough right now for all of

them. and not just for health care, but i would say for the public health workers as well. they're being berated and just being treated totally unfairly. and it's tough for people to carry on in this sort of environment. >> dr. alex garza, >> dr. alex, thank you for taking a few minutes. i appreciate that. good luck to you. >> up next, checking back in on the early morning vote with a special velshi resport.

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welcome back. in north carolina this morning the president's kfs we response has become a major sticking point for voters down there. it could be part of his standing in the most current polls. more than three million voters need to cast their ballots. and we're back with ali velshi in ashville, north carolina. we're seeing it nationally, the folks going out early. we heard this talking to the trump campaign. they say loex day is when their voters are going to turn out.

>> there is about seven mill registered voters in charz as of this morning, 43% of them had voted. the rest were in person, i'm in ashville, a bit of blue in an area that is largely red here. there is a lot of gerrymandering that has been going on in north carolina, this is almost all of western north carolina. it is tight with cunningham who has been in a scandal of his own, he was having an affair with someone that was not his wife.

the governor's race here is not all that fight. roy moore looking to be in a strong position. this is a state that breaks different ways for different things. it will be difficult to watch the combination of turnout, and what what it goes. the number one issue to people i have been talking to in north carolina continues to be coronavirus and we're seeing that play out in the country, in the bottom corner of our screen in the stock market today. people have a tigheightened awareness and fear of what the resurgence looks like. people say they don't apt mask m -- want a mask mandate, but much of the world going through a resurgence and donald trump and mark meadows say we're not going to get a handle on it until there is vaccine. >> you make a good point, too,

about how tight it is. obama 2008. romney very narrowly 2012. trump by three in 2016. it is produced with a lot of outcomes. the definition of a competitive state. thank you for that report. i keep saying that scenery over your shoulder, what a beautiful place. i'm very jealous. thank you for that and thank you for being with us this hour. chuck will be back tomorrow. coverage continues with katie tur after the break. rn laws requiring insurance companies to cover people with pre-existing conditions. they're rushing a lifetime appointment to the supreme court to change the law through the courts. 70% of americans want to keep protections for pre-existing conditions in place. tell our leaders in washingtn

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good afternoon, i'm katy r tur. it is 2:00 p.m. in the east, there is now eight days left to vote. 58 million americans have exercised that right not