The US’s top infectious disease expert has said residents of every state should shelter at home, after the US recorded the highest one-day death toll from coronavirus of any country so far.

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More than a dozen states have not yet issued orders for residents to stay at home. Donald Trump has resisted calls for a national stay-at-home recommendation, saying on Wednesday that he wanted to give governors “flexibility” on the question.

But Dr Anthony Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said at a CNN town hall on Thursday night that he did not understand why residents of every state were not being asked to shelter at home.

“You know, the tension between federally mandated versus states’ rights to do what they want is something I don’t want to get into,” he said. “But if you look at what’s going on in this country, I just don’t understand why we’re not doing that.

“I don’t understand why that’s not happening,”

Governors in Alabama, Missouri and elsewhere who have resisted a statewide stay-at-home order have asserted that their state remained somehow insulated from the outbreak. But while the United States has major identifiable hotspots, a lack of widespread testing meant that developing hotspots could go undetected. Maps plotting confirmed cases indicate that the virus has spread to every corner of the country.

In 24 hours ending Thursday night, the United States recorded 1,169 Covid-19 deaths, according to the Johns Hopkins University tracker – the most deaths in a day recorded for any country so far in the outbreak. Previously Italy had recorded 969 deaths from coronavirus in one day.

The number of confirmed coronavirus cases in the US has risen past 245,000, and 6,053 have died. But those numbers indicate that most of the country is still in the early stages of its confrontation with the virus. The White House estimates that hundreds of thousands of people could die in the outbreak.

Administration officials are, meanwhile, weighing new guidelines for people to cover their faces outside their homes, but it was unclear whether the guidelines issued by Trump would comport with recommendations from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

The CDC has proposed guidelines recommending that nearly all Americans wear some kind of face cover on trips to grocery stores, pharmacies or other necessary excursions.

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The Trump administration appeared to be preparing recommendations for Americans living in hotspots or in areas that have recorded a high degree of community transmission to wear non-medical masks, T-shirts or bandannas to cover their nose and mouth.

The recommendations were still being finalized on Thursday, according to the White House, with officials reluctant to create a demand for high-grade medical masks that could divert supply from the hospitals and care facilities where they are most needed.

The mayors of Los Angeles and New York City have both advised residents to wear masks.

Dr Jerome Adams, the US surgeon general, has repeatedly admonished Americans not to wear face masks, saying they do not prevent the people who wear them from catching the virus.

A partisan gap has opened in states’ responses to the coronavirus. Republican governors have been slower to issue stay-at-home orders and order non-essential businesses to close than have Democratic governors, including in states such as Florida with dense populations where a large number of cases is believed already to have taken hold.

The Republican governor of Alabama, Kay Ivey, said her state would not shelter in place because it was not a hotspot. “Y’all, we are not Louisiana, we are not New York state, we are not California,” she said.

US officials have been telling people to stay at home as much as possible and keep at least 6ft away from others when they do go out. Other advice includes frequent hand-washing and not touching your face.

Global cases of the new coronavirus have shot past 1 million with more than 53,000 fatalities, a Reuters tally showed on Friday, as death tolls kept rising in the United States and western Europe while the world economy tanked.

Just in the previous day, there were 6,095 new deaths – nearly double all deaths in China.

Associated Press and Reuters contributed to this report