The U.S. surpassed the 14 million mark in confirmed cases of COVID-19 Thursday and set new records in both daily recorded cases and daily deaths as the country delves deeper into the bleakest stretch of the pandemic.
On Thursday alone, Johns Hopkins says that the U.S. reported 2,879 deaths linked to COVID-19, and 217,664 more people were confirmed to have contracted the virus.
Thursday marked the second straight day that the U.S. set a record in daily reported deaths. According to Johns Hopkins, at least 2,500 people have died of COVID-19 in the last three days.
Thursday also marked a new record in daily reported cases of the coronavirus and the third day in the last week that the U.S. had reported more than 200,000 cases.
Finally, Thursday marked an entire month (from Nov. 3 to Dec. 3) of at least 100,000 new cases of COVID-19 each day. Between Oct. 30 and today, more than 5 million Americans have contracted COVID-19 — a figure that represents 36 percent of all cases that have been recorded since the pandemic began.
And as dire as the situation is today, health experts only expect the virus to spread further in the coming days. Millions of people boarded an airplane to travel this weekend, and health experts say the spread that occurred during the Thanksgiving holiday is just now being recorded in tests.
Deaths are also a lagging statistic, meaning those figures will likely rise in the coming weeks. And with many hospitals already at capacity — the COVID Tracking Project reports that an all-time high 100,000 Americans across the country are fighting the virus in a hospital — some health care facilities may be forced to turn patients away.