Dec. 5 (UPI) — The United States hit a new single-day record of new COVID-19 cases — 227,885.
The number recorded Friday brings the total number of cases in the country since the start of the pandemic to more than 14 million cases, according to Johns Hopkins University’s global tracker.
It marked a new single-day record and the fourth time the country has topped 200,000 new cases in day.
The country also reported 2,607 new deaths, bringing the total number of U.S. deaths to over 279,000.
In the past week, COVID-19 has become the United States’ No. 1 killer, University of Washington researchers said Friday.
The country reported 11,820 COVID-19-related deaths in the past week, which “makes COVID-19 the No. 1 cause of death in the United States of America this week,” the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation researchers said in a briefing.
Ischemic heart disease, which killed 10,724 people in the past week, was the No. 2 killer, the data shows.
Fifty-four percent of Americans now know someone who has died or been hospitalized due to COVID-19, and seven out of 10 are bothered by others who don’t wear masks in public, according to a survey from Pew Research Institute.
New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo announced Friday 11,271 new COVID-19 cases and 60 COVID-19-related deaths statewide.
In California, a surge in COVID-19 cases has been reported in prisons with more than 4,000 active cases among inmates and another 1,430 among staff, marking the highest numbers since the pandemic began.
The active cases bring the total numbers up to more than 22,300, including 90 deaths. This equates to about 227 COVID-19 cases per 1,000 or 20% of the total inmate population, according to the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation. The rate statewide among the general public is about 32 cases per 1,000 people.
California Gov. Gavin Newsom announced a stay-at home order to go into effect in regions that drop below 15% intensive care unit capacity. Though no region has hit that threshold, Bay Area leaders said they were implementing the order preemptively to curb the spread of the coronavirus.
