Peter Navarro, the White House director of trade and manufacturing policy, said in an interview on Sunday that the White House was working to prepare for the possibility of a second wave of the coronavirus in autumn, though he said it wouldn’t necessarily come.

“We are filling the stockpile in anticipation of a possible problem in autumn,” Navarro told Jake Tapper on the CNN programme State of the Union. “We’re doing everything we can.”

The comments come in contrast to President Trump’s repeated assertions that the virus will “go away” and his questioning of its ability to last into autumn and winter.

But if anything, the virus is gaining ground. Nationwide, cases have risen 15 per cent over the last two weeks. Cases are rising in 18 states across the South, West and Midwest. Seven states hit single-day case records on Saturday, and five others hit a record earlier in the week.

In Harris county, Texas, which includes most of Houston, more than 1,100 new infections were reported both on Friday and on Saturday, by far the 2 highest daily totals there.

The Trump administration’s latest reckoning with the magnitude of the health crisis came on the same day that the WHO reported the largest one-day increase in infections across the globe. It said that there were 183,020 new cases, with Brazil and the US accounting for the most new infections.