This weekend, some of Florida's largest school districts have moved to require masks for students, the latest in a weeklong saga that began when Gov. Ron DeSantis issued an executive order aimed at preventing districts from mandating face coverings for kids.

However, the mandates -- issued by districts including Hillsborough (Tampa), Orange (Orlando), and Palm Beach -- come with a catch: parents are allowed to opt their children out of them, without providing a reason.

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The U.S. just recorded a fourth consecutive day with more than 100,000 new daily COVID-19 cases, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The country is averaging more than 99,000 daily cases over the last week, CDC data shows, as the delta variant continues to spread.

Tom Bossert, a former White House homeland security adviser and an ABC News contributor, painted a somber picture of the COVID-19 crisis unfolding, saying, "It's too late for any meaningful mitigation" in Gulf states.

Bossert warned that hospital systems in hard-hit states could be overwhelmed within a few days as the delta variant spreads further.

"If this pace continues for the next four or five days, which it seems it will, the hospital systems in Florida and Louisiana will collapse. That's how bad this is. By 'collapse,' I mean they will be full, their ICUs and their hospitals, they will be turning away patients," he said on "Good Morning America" Saturday.

"In some states -- Florida, Louisiana, Texas is looking bad -- all through the Gulf Coast, I believe it's too late for any meaningful mitigation," he continued. "In other words, there is so much disease that what we're seeing is a mathematical certainty."

Bossert urged federal and local governments to focus on providing aid to overburdened hospital systems.

Several San Francisco restaurants have been forced to temporarily close due to a spike in COVID-19 cases.

Aziza, a Moroccan restaurant in the Outer Richmond area, closed after several employees' breakthrough cases.

“We’ve been closed a week, and we’ll be closed probably another week,” co-owner Scott Chilcutt told ABC San Francisco station KGO. He mandated the vaccine for employees in the spring, but three staffers still recently tested positive even after getting shots.

Laurie Thomas, executive director of the Golden Gate Restaurant Association, said there’s only been a handful of recent closures, but each is painful.

"It’s like PTSD again," she said.

In Louisiana, which has the nation's highest case rate per 100,000 residents, COVID-19 hospitalizations are reaching peak levels, with more than 1,700 patients now receiving care.

"We're seeing people that are way too young to be so sick," David Wrightson, a respiratory therapist and ECMO (extracorporeal membrane oxygenation) specialist for the Willis-Knighton Health System in Shreveport, Louisiana, told ABC News. "We see families destroyed. We see children without one or more parent because of this virus. We see a new mom who will never go home to see her newborn, will never see her child grow up."

He went on, "When you see someone that's 30 years old with no medical problems at all, nobody knew anything was wrong, and we have this person literally on death's doorstep, doing everything in our power to turn them around and return them to their family. The vaccine is something worth getting."

More people need to see and understand the reality of this disease, he said.

"I wish I could show them a few steps in our day to see what we see and to see what we have to do, and to go home at night and, and have nightmares about those things, and sometimes cry yourself to sleep," he said.

-ABC News’ Erica Baumgart and Arielle Mitropoulos