The United States reported a record Covid-19 death toll for a second consecutive day.
With 3763 additional fatalities reporting in the last 24 hours, the total U.S. death toll from the deadly disease rose to 342395, as per latest data from the Johns Hopkins University. This is the highest daily death toll since the beginning of the pandemic, and breaks the all-time high of 3669 reported on the previous day.
Likewise, daily new case rate crossed the 200000 mark for the second consecutive day.
With 2,29,304 new cases reporting across the country in the last 24 hours, the total number of patients infected with the disease increased to 19744734.
33 states reported increase in daily cases in the last 7 seven days, while 26 states reported increase in fatalities in the same period.
Louisiana reported a record 6,754 COVID-19 cases on Wednesday.
The number of people hospitalized with coronavirus infection is continuing to rise breaking records.
As per the latest update published by COVID Tracking Project on Thursday, a total of 125,220 patients are currently admitted in U.S. hospitals with the deadly disease. Out of this, 23069 patients are admitted in Intensive Care Units.
The national Covid test positivity average rate increased to 11.30 percent.
Meanwhile, the new coronavirus strain was reported in a second U.S. state.
“Just an hour or so ago, we were informed that this new variant, this new strain that we’ve identified obviously from the United Kingdom, from other parts of the globe, identified in Colorado yesterday, has been identified here in the state of California, in Southern California,” Governor Gavin Newsom said in an interview with top infectious disease expert Dr. Anthony Fauci on Facebook Wednesday.
CDC officials say they don’t know how widely the variant first identified in the UK has spread in the United States.
“So far more than 2.6 million people, including health care professionals and nursing home and assisted living facility residents have received the first dose (of COVID vaccine)”, Dr. Henry Walke, the Incident Manager for CDC’s COVID-19 response, said in a media briefing.
The CDC’s ensemble forecast now projects that there will be up to 424,000 US deaths by January 23. It comes a day after President-elect Joe Biden warned that infections over the holidays will produce soaring case counts in January and a soaring death toll into February.
Speaking in Wilmington, Delaware, Biden recalled that in September he warned that the death toll would hit 400,000 before the end of the Trump Administration in January. “And the reality is, it looks like we’ll hit that grim milestone”.
Meanwhile the Chinese Government approved a coronavirus vaccine developed by state-owned pharmaceutical giant Sinopharm.
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