US sets new daily records of 3,700 Covid deaths, 250,000 cases | Al Jazeera

The United States set a double record on Wednesday registering more than 3,700 deaths and over 250,000 new Covid-19 cases in just 24 hours, according to figures from Johns Hopkins University.

With the new reported fatalities, the death toll in the US has now reached more than 307,291.

The country has seen a spectacular spike in Covid infections for more than a month now, with some 113,000 people currently hospitalised due to the virus, according to data from the Department of Health and Human Services.

The numbers far outpace the rest of the world. About five percent of the US population has contracted the virus, or about 17 million people.

The United States has already rolled out its vaccination programme against COVID-19, and it aims to get 2.9 million doses of the vaccine developed by Pfizer Inc and German partner BioNTech, by the end of the week.

But Dr Robert Redfield, director of the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), earlier warned that the country’s healthcare system could face a collapse before vaccines become more widely available by next year.