Total coronavirus infections in the United States have topped 12 million, and cases are approaching 200,000 in a day, as health experts warn of an alarming new stage in the pandemic's spread while Americans embark on holiday travel that could seed more outbreaks.

WASHINGTON - Of the nearly 150,000 Americans who have died of covid-19, more than 6,100 have died in Texas, and 302 of those deaths have occurred in Hidalgo County, along the country's southern border. Forty-five of those bodies are in a refrigerated 18-wheeler that Aaron Rivera bought three weeks ago, when the phone was ringing off the hook at his Rivera Funeral Home in McAllen.