New coronavirus infections in the United States rose above a troubling 30000 mark on Wednesday, while COVID-related casualties in the country remain at a stable low rate of around 300 a day.
With 31845 additional cases, the national total has increased to 33,947,232, as per the latest data from Johns Hopkins University.
This is higher than the country's seven-day average of 26513 cases per day.
However, there is no corresponding surge in the daily number of COVID-related casualties.
With an additional 331 deaths reporting in the last 24 hours, the total COVID death toll in the country reached 608,115.
The seven-day COVID fatality average is 284.
Test positivity rate has increased to 4.4 percent.
Florida reported the most number of cases - 6425 - and COVID-related deaths - 71 - on Wednesday.
A total of 29,324,300 people have so far recovered from the disease in the country.
A total of 335,487,779 vaccine doses have been administered so far nationally. 184,835,149 people have received at least one dose.
More than 160 million people, or 48.2 percent of the U.S. population, are fully vaccinated, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
79.2 percent of people above 65 have received both vaccine doses.
In other COVID-related developments in the country, multiplatinum recording singer/songwriter Olivia Rodrigo met with President Joe Biden and Chief Medical Advisor to the President Dr. Anthony Fauci to help spread the message about the importance of youth vaccination.
"It's important to have conversations with friends and family members, encouraging all communities to get vaccinated, and actually get to a vaccination site, which you can do more easily than ever before, given how many sites we have and how easy it is to find them at Vaccines.gov," she told reporters earlier.
The Department of Health and Human Services announced that more than 2 million people have signed up for health coverage during the special enrollment period, which opened on February 15.
Americans have until August 15 to go to Healthcare.gov, sign up for coverage, and take advantage of the lower premiums made possible by the American Rescue Plan, White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki said at a press briefing Wednesday.
She also told reporters that the U.S. Government began shipping 1.5 million doses of Moderna vaccine to Sri Lanka. "We'll be shipping more doses throughout the week," she added.
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