US Records Over 1 Million New COVID Cases in the Past 10 Days

The U.S. has recorded more than 1 million new coronavirus cases in just the past ten days as the national total soared past 10m cases amid a widespread surge – while Texas on Wednesday became the first to record a million cases as a state.

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Daily cases for the country have steadily climbed throughout November to record a total of 1,129,463 cases in the last ten days alone, figures from Johns Hopkins University show. According to data from Johns Hopkins, there were 111,433 new cases and 590 deaths in the U.S. This brings total cases for the country up to 10,252,129, and the overall death toll to 239,671.

The soaring figures came as experts warned that even though successful vaccines are coming into view, the White House appears to be doing little to contain a pandemic increasingly out of control.

“In the last couple of months you have seen the federal government basically throw in the towel,” Ashish Jha, dean of the Brown University School of Public Health, told NBC on Wednesday morning. He added: “There’s been no new guidance, very little effort coming from the federal government, and I think that is definitely contributing to a nationwide surge.”

Meanwhile, Texas, the second-most populous state in the U.S., has recorded 1,010,364 cases since the start of the pandemic in March and 19,337 deaths. No other state has alone reached the 1m figure. And New York, which was the worst Covid-19 hotspot in the world during the initial cascade of U.S. cases in the spring, then used restrictions to squash infections, is now seeing rates creeping up again.

Hospitalizations also reached record highs. According to the Covid Tracking Project, a record of 62,000 people were hospitalized on Tuesday, and 17 states reported single-day records for hospitalizations.

Joe Biden has already warned the U.S. is “facing a very dark winter” and that even with Pfizer’s announcement that it has a vaccine it believes is 90% effective, 200,000 more lives could be lost in the US in the next few months.

Trump has been complaining baselessly about a fraudulent election on Twitter. Since Biden was declared the election winner on Saturday morning, his only public outings have been to the golf course.

By this week, Texas had surpassed California, which as of Tuesday had 989,432 cases, to record the highest number of positive coronavirus tests of any U.S. state.