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Americans will celebrate Thanksgiving on Thursday with the pandemic at perhaps its most precarious point yet.

Coronavirus cases in the United States have reached record highs, with an average of more than 176,000 a day over the past week. Deaths are soaring, with more than 2,200 announced on both Tuesday and Wednesday, the highest daily totals since early May. Even as reports of new infections begin to level off in parts of the Midwest, that progress is being offset by fresh outbreaks on both coasts and in the Southwest, where officials are scrambling to impose new restrictions to slow the spread.

The national uptick includes weekly case records in places as diffuse as Delaware, Ohio, Maine and Arizona, where more than 27,000 cases were announced over seven days, exceeding the state’s summer peak.

In New Mexico, grocery stores are being ordered to close if four employees test positive. In Los Angeles County, Calif., restaurants can no longer offer in-person dining. And in Pima County, Ariz., which includes Tucson, cases have reached record levels and officials have imposed a voluntary curfew.

“What we’re trying to do is decrease social mobility,” said Dr. Theresa Cullen, the Pima County health director.

Deaths are also surging, especially in the Midwest, the region that drove much of the case growth this fall. More than 900 deaths have been announced over the past week in Illinois, along with more than 400 each in Indiana, Ohio and Wisconsin.

Health officials have worried aloud for weeks that large Thanksgiving gatherings could seed another wave of infections at a time when the country can scarcely afford it. In many places, hospitals are already full, contact tracers have been overwhelmed and health care workers are exhausted.

“Wisconsin is in a bad place right now with no sign of things getting better without action,” said an open letter signed by hundreds of employees of UW Health, the state university’s medical center and health system. “We are, quite simply, out of time. Without immediate change, our hospitals will be too full to treat all of those with the virus and those with other illnesses or injuries.”

More than 260,000 people have died of coronavirus in the United States. In a speech on the eve of Thanksgiving, President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr. spoke of his family’s losses, and urged Americans to “hang on” and called for unity.

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Biden Calls for Unity in Thanksgiving Address

President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr. stressed the importance of unity and encouraged Americans to be careful with Thanksgiving celebrations this year to help curb the spread of the coronavirus.

You know, looking back over our history, you see that it’s been in the most difficult circumstances that the soul of our nation has been forged. And now we find ourselves again facing a long, hard winter. We’ve fought nearly a yearlong battle with a virus that has devastated this nation. I know the country has grown weary of the fight. We need to remember, we’re at war with a virus, not with one another, not with each other. This year we’re asking Americans to forgo so many of the traditions that we’ve long made this holiday, that’s made it so special. For our family, for 40-such years, 40-some years, we’ve had a tradition of traveling over Thanksgiving, a tradition that we’ve kept every year save one: the year our son Beau died. But this year, we’ll be staying home. I know how hard it is to forgo family traditions, but it’s so very important. I give thanks now for you, for the trust you’ve placed in me. Together we’ll lift our voices in the coming months and years, and our song shall be of lives saved, breaches repaired, a nation made whole again.

“I remember that first Thanksgiving, the empty chair, the silence,” said Mr. Biden, whose son Beau died in 2015. “It takes your breath away. It’s really hard to care. It’s hard to give thanks. It’s hard to even think of looking forward. It’s so hard to hope. I understand.”