5th January, 2022
The United States with the world grim records in COVID-19 deaths and cases, has set another global record.
This time it was on the number of daily confirmed cases as the country logged almost 1 million cases on Monday.
According to Reuters, the figure nearly doubled the country’s peak hit just a week ago as the highly contagious Omicron variant shows no sign of slowing.
The number of hospitalized COVID-19 patients has risen nearly 50% in the last week and now exceeds 100,000, the first time that threshold was reached since the winter surge a year ago.
Overall, the United States has seen a daily average of 486,000 cases over the last week, a rate that has doubled in seven days and far outstrips that of any other country.
The 978,856 new infections on Monday includes some cases from Saturday and Sunday, when many states do not report.
The average number of U.S. COVID-19 deaths per day has remained fairly steady throughout December and into early January at about 1,300, according to a Reuters tally, though deaths typically lag behind cases and hospitalisations.