WASHINGTON (a news agency, BLOOMBERG)The United States has set a third straight daily record for new Covid-19 infections, notching more than 127,000 cases, John Hopkins University reported Friday (Nov 6).
And the death toll as of 8.30pm local time (9.30am Singapore time on Saturday) over the past 24 hours was 1,149, the Baltimore-based university said.
The outbreak has been surging for weeks across the country, with the Midwest worst-hit even as the number of new diagnoses were approaching springtime levels in the south, north-east and west.
While deaths remained far lower than the peak in spring when the pandemic first hit, but it's still the fourth day in a row with more than 1,000 deathsa rate not seen since early September.
As of Friday evening, the USthe worst hit country in the world in terms of deaths and total caseshad more than 236,000 coronavirus-related fatalities and 9.7 million known infections.
Coronavirus patients are also filling hospital beds across the Midwest, with Illinois and Michigan hospitalising about 100 Covid-19 cases a day, and North Dakota and South Dakota reporting nearly a fifth of its inpatients having the pandemic disease.
Illinois admitted an average of 131 Covid-19 cases a day to hospitals over the past week, while admissions to Michigan hospitals averaged 95 cases.
Elsewhere, Florida topped the country after hospitalising an average of 136 Covid-19 patients daily in the same period, according to Department of Health and Human Services data analysed by Bloomberg News.
Nationwide, 58,678 beds were occupied by Covid-19 patients, the data showed.
Almost 11,000 patients are being treated in intensive care units, according to the Covid Tracking Project.
Hospitalisations have soared as daily Covid-19 cases topped 100,000 in the US this week.
Admissions increased more than 30 per cent in Michigan, Florida, and Ohio, and more than 20 per cent in Minnesota, Illinois, Arizona, Wisconsin, and Missouri from Oct 30 to Nov 6, government data indicated.
Texas had 6,377 Covid-19 patients in hospital as of Friday, more than any other state, with hospitalisations increasing 6.7 per cent over the past week.
Covid-19 cases make up 10 per cent or more of all hospitalised patients in 18 states.
Cases are expected to increase as the US moves into colder weather and people switch to socialising primarily indoors, prime conditions for passing the virus from person to person.
Colder, drier weather might also play a role in creating favorable conditions for the virus to linger in air and on surfaces.
Reasons that deaths are down from their peak include the fact that as cases are more spread out geographically than they were at the start of the US epidemic, hospitals are better able to cope with the caseload.