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United States has more than 300,000 new daily COVID-19 cases

United States has more than 300,000 new daily COVID-19 cases

Posted December. 31, 2021 07:55,   

Updated December. 31, 2021 07:55

한국어

With the new COVID-19 variant of the Omicron prevailing across the globe, the United States has been recording a new high of 300,000 new patients a day. Likewise, European nations are making all-time highs day after day. Britain, France and Italy jointly added up to almost 500,000 newly confirmed cases a day.

As of Wednesday, the average daily number of new cases in the United States for the past one week hit 301,472 according to The New York Times on Thursday (local time), up by 30,000 or so from Tuesday’s 267,305 which broke the previous record high of 251,232 reached on Jan. 11. Just over the recent two weeks, the average of daily new cases in the United States has spiked by more than 2.5 times. The pandemic is accelerating mainly around major cities in the east of the nation such as Washington, New York and New Jersey.  

European nations are reaching a new high day after day. The British government announced on Wednesday that 183,037 citizens tested positive, way up from the previous day’s record of 129,471 which was then an all-time high. According to the French government, 208,099 cases were newly confirmed on Wednesday, the new highest record made just in a day following the previous record high of 179,807 on Tuesday. Italy also reported 98,030 cases on Wednesday, up from the highest figure (78,313) as of Tuesday.

Director General of the World Health Organization Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus diagnosed that the highly infectious variant of the Omicron and the Delta variants alike are spreading like wild fire to produce a “tsunami” of COVID-19 patients across the world.

Nevertheless, increases of COVID-19 patients in hospital and deaths are showing a relative plateau state compared to the growing scale of confirmed cases in the United States. As of Wednesday, the number of hospitalized patients rose by 11 percent to 75,000 compared to two weeks ago.


Jae-Dong Yu jarrett@donga.com