By Kirsten West Savali ·November 12, 2020November 12, 2020

Just one day after Texas became the first U.S. state to cross the grim 1 million COVID-19 cases threshold, California became the second U.S. state to reach that milestone, the LA Times reports.

California, the nation’s most populous state, has a recorded 1.00 million COVID-19 cases and 18,115 recorded deaths. Texas, the nation’s second most populous state, has a recorded 1.05 million COVID-19 cases and 19,555 recorded deaths.

“We all need to act now,” California’s Public Health Director Barbara Ferrer said during a briefing. “The actions we take today, tomorrow and next week have tremendous impact on the health and well-being of many, many people across the county. If, collectively, we fail to stop the acceleration of new cases, we will have no choice but to look at additional actions.”

“If you are going to travel — which we are recommending you not do, we are actually recommending this Thanksgiving be a stay-at-home Thanksgiving — but if you are going to travel, we do ask when you come back that you quarantine for 14 days,” Ferrer continued. “And the tighter you can restrict your activities over those 14 days, the better off we all are.”

In Harris County, Texas, where Houston is located, there is an average of “573 new COVID-19 cases daily compared to an average of about 538 new daily cases in September and an average of 312 new daily cases in October.”

Yaquelin De La Cruz holds a COVID-19 vaccine at the Research Centers of America (RCA) in Hollywood, Florida, on August 13, 2020. – (Photo by CHANDAN KHANNA/AFP via Getty Images)

As ESSENCE previously reported, Albert Bourla, Pfizer Pharmaceuticals’ CEO, claims that a vaccine under development to protect people from COVID-19 could be 90% effective.

“What we know right now, it is with a very, very high level of confidence, [is that] these are very highly effective vaccines,” Bourla told Dr. Sanjay Gupta, CNN‘s chief medical correspondent. “…we don’t have any safety concerns, but we need to wait until the results are there.”

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