U.S. President Donald Trump and Democratic candidate Joe Biden on Monday are down to the final full week of campaigning before the November 3 election.

With eight days to go before Election Day, more than 59.1 million Americans have already voted in person or by mail, a pace of early voting that could lead to the highest turnout rate in more than a century, according to data from the U.S. Elections Project at the University of Florida.

On Monday, Trump will head to Pennsylvania, a critical swing state being heavily courted with frequent visits by both candidates, and speak at rallies in Allentown, Lititz and Martinsburg. He is set for multiple trips to Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin this week, as well as visits to Nebraska, Arizona and Nevada.

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Biden was expected to remain in his home state of Delaware on Monday. He is scheduled to travel to Georgia on Tuesday, with stops in Atlanta and Warm Springs, a town of about 400 people where Democratic President Franklin D. Roosevelt, who took office during the Great Depression and rolled out his New Deal recovery program, died in 1945.

Despite Biden's solid lead in national opinion polls, the contest in the most critical battleground states such as Florida and Pennsylvania that could decide the outcome appears closer.

Biden will be aided with an appearance in Orlando, Florida, on Tuesday by former President Barack Obama, under whom he served as vice president.

The United States has seen its highest number of new COVID-19 cases in the past two days, offering Biden's campaign a chance to remind voters of how Trump and his allies have downplayed the advice of public health experts to wear masks and observe social-distancing guidelines to combat COVID-19 transmission.

"There's no nation in the world that's recovered like we've recovered," Trump told cheering supporters in New Hampshire on Sunday, many not wearing protective masks.

White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows said on Sunday that the administration was "not going to control the pandemic," and was instead focused on vaccines and therapeutics.

Biden called Meadows' remarks an admission that "they've given up on their basic duty to protect the American people."

(With input from Reuters)

(Cover: A man sanitizes a privacy booth at a polling station opened for early voting at Our Lady Help of Christians in Staten Island, New York City, U.S., October 25, 2020. /Reuters)