As of Wednesday, 99,660 new cases of the virus were reported.
Washington, United States:
More than 120,000 cases of coronavirus have been reported in the United States in the past 24 hours, breaking a daily record set the day before, according to a count from Johns Hopkins University.
The country reported 123,085 new infections between 8:30 p.m. Wednesday and 8:30 p.m. Thursday (01:30 GMT), and 1,226 additional deaths, according to the Baltimore-based school’s tally.
As of Wednesday, 99,660 new cases of the virus were reported. Thursday’s tally breaks that record of 23,425 cases.
While deaths remain below their worst levels in the spring, Thursday was also the third day in a row that deaths have exceeded 1,000. The last time people died at this rate from Covid-19 in the United States was early September.
More than 9.6 million people have been infected and 234,000 have died in the United States so far during the pandemic, by far the highest toll in absolute terms in the world.
The new record comes as US President Donald Trump, who survived a fight against Covid-19 in October and insists the virus ‘will go away’, was fighting for his political life on Thursday with the vote count from the Tuesday presidential election still in progress.
His Democratic rival, Joe Biden, sought to turn the vote into a referendum on Trump’s handling of the crisis, and vowed to listen to scientific recommendations on handling the pandemic if he were to take the White House.
With the surge in coronavirus cases across the country since mid-October, more than 100 million voters voted by mail or in person before election day – the highest number of early voters ever – as many many Americans sought to avoid crowded voting booths.
The final election results were in part delayed by the high number of mail-in ballots, which Trump says without proof are fraudulent.
Health officials in some states have already issued warnings about their ability to handle an influx of hospitalizations as the winter flu season approaches.
The pandemic has also hit the US economy, fueling a historic contraction in growth and tens of millions of job losses.
(Except for the title, this story was not edited by GalacticGaming staff and is posted from a syndicated feed.)
