US records highest single-day spike with over 150,000 new COVID-19 cases

WASHINGTON: Public health officials in the US announced over 152,000 new coronavirus cases on Thursday, the first day over 150,000 since the pandemic began, an alarming record that came just over a week after the country first experienced 100,000 cases in a single day.

Over 100,000 COVID-19 cases have been announced nationwide every day since November 4, and six of the last nine days have broken the previous record, reported New York Times.

Hospitalisations for COVID-19 also set a record on Thursday, climbing to 67,096, according to the Covid Tracking Project. It was the third straight day of record numbers, and the figure has doubled in just five weeks.

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Meanwhile, deaths are also averaging to over 1,000 each day.

Illinois Governor JB Pritzker suggested that he could soon impose a stay-at-home order in the state, where more than 75,000 cases have emerged in the last week.

"We're running out of time and we're running out of options," New York Times quoted Pritzker.

Case numbers are trending upward in 46 states and holding relatively steady in four, while no state is seeing a decline in cases.

Pennsylvania, Indiana, and Minnesota all exceeded their previous single-day records on Thursday by more than 1,000 cases.

"COVID-19 is everywhere in our state: It is bad everywhere, and it is getting worse everywhere," said Julie Willems Van Dijk, the deputy secretary of the Wisconsin Department of Health Services.

According to the latest update by Johns Hopkins University, the US currently has 10,546,706 coronavirus cases in total, with 242,622 deaths.