“You know, everything is COVID, COVID, COVID,” Trump said at a campaign rally in Michigan. “And you know, cases are up. Why are cases up? Because we test more than anyone in history.”

Yet the national test positive rate has averaged 6.3% over the past week, and the rate has been climbing since mid-October, suggesting that the increase in cases is not merely due to increased testing.

Also, hospitalizations have been rising steeply, especially in Midwestern states. More than 46,000 people are currently hospitalized across the U.S., a high not seen since mid-August, according to the COVID Tracking Project. Between Oct. 1 and Oct. 28, hospitalizations have more than doubled in North Dakota, Wisconsin, Ohio, and Pennsylvania.

More than 1,000 people died due to COVID-19 on Thursday. To date, over 229,000 deaths have been confirmed in the U.S.

Trump said at his rally in Michigan that doctors are inflating the number of COVID-19 deaths in the U.S. because they are paid more money for deaths due to the coronavirus. It’s a claim that a physician’s group has called “reckless and false.”

Donald Trump Jr. played down the pandemic mortality rate on Friday, saying that the number of new COVID-19 deaths in the U.S. is “almost nothing,” CNBC reported. The number of deaths reported in the past week has averaged 797 each day, up 14% from two weeks ago.

On a Thursday phone call with journalists following a report on the company’s financial status, Amazon finance chief Brian Olsavsky announced the shipping giant now employs more than 1 million people globally for the first time in the company’s 26-year history.

As many small businesses struggle to stay afloat amid tough COVID-19 restrictions throughout the country, Amazon ramped up production to meet the dramatic demand in online sales. Olsavsky said the company added more than a quarter-million jobs in the last three months alone, bringing the total number of people employed by Amazon to more than 1.1 million.

Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp and first lady Marty Kemp are now in quarantine after being exposed to someone who had tested positive for COVID-19.

Twenty percent of 104 grocery store employees tested positive for the coronavirus in a Massachusetts store, an infection rate that was “significantly higher than the surrounding communities,” according to researchers at Harvard University. The study, published in the medical journal Occupational & Environmental Medicine, reported grocery store workers are at a heightened risk of contracting the coronavirus. Those who had direct contact with customers were five times more likely to test positive for the virus. Researchers also found that the inability to practice social distancing consistently at work was a “significant risk factor for anxiety and depression.”

El Paso County Judge Ricardo Samaniego, who acts as the county’s chief administrator, has ordered a two-week shutdown of nonessential services as COVID-19 cases have skyrocketed, CNN reported Friday.

“Since the inception of this pandemic, El Paso County has never seen this level of infections through our community,” Samaniego said.

“Our hospitals, our capacity, our medical professionals are overwhelmed, and if we don’t respond, we will see unprecedented levels of death,” he added.

Belgium will go into a partial lockdown on Sunday until Dec. 13 as cases and hospitalizations reach record highs, the Associated Press reported. The European Center for Disease Prevention and Control on Friday ranked Belgium as the worst-hit country in Europe with 1,600 cases per 100,000 people.

“Our country is in a state of sanitary emergency. The pressure is immense, as you have undoubtedly seen in recent days,” said Prime Minister Alexander De Croo. “At the moment, there is only one choice, and that is for all of us to support our healthcare sector as much as we can. We have to limit our physical contacts as much as possible.”