Washington: The United States for the first time has seen more than 3,000 coronavirus-related deaths in a single day.
Data from Johns Hopkins University shows there were about 3,100 deaths on Wednesday, topping the previous record of 2,879 last week. The data show there were 221,000 new COVID-19 cases Wednesday, the second most to date.
Over the past week, there has been an average of almost 2,300 deaths per day.
Since the start of the pandemic, the United States has recorded 15.41 million coronavirus cases and about 289,800 deaths, according to Johns Hopkins.
Hospitalizations also set a record Wednesday, 106,000 nationwide. About a fifth of all those patients are in intensive care.
The new figures Thursday came ahead of a key meeting of the Food and Drug Administration’s regulatory vaccines committee, which is expected to grant emergency use authorization for the vaccine developed jointly by Pfizer and BioNTech.
