The U.S. has overtaken India in terms of daily new COVID-19 infection cases. The country added 63,663 new cases on Wednesday, pushing its total to 8.58 million, while India reported over 54,000 new infections, bringing its total cases to 7.7 million.
The U.S. is in the midst of a third wave of COVID-19 infection, with all but five states having seen new daily cases climb over the past two weeks, according to John Hopkins University. The country is now seeing a weekly average of nearly 60,000 news case per day, which is nearly a 40% increase from the start of October.
Meanwhile, Texas has overtaken California in terms of the most number of cases in the U.S., reporting 6,414 new cases in the last 24 hours to bring total cases to 889,513. California reported 3,047 new cases to bring the total to 888,305.
Worldwide, total cases have surpassed 41 million, while total deaths have increased to at least 1.13 million people.
Dr. Jay Butler, the deputy director for infectious diseases at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said that one or maybe even two COVID-19 vaccines could be available later this year based on the progress of ongoing clinical trials.
“We’re cautiously optimistic that vaccines will be available, although in limited quantities, before the end of 2020,” Butler told reporters during a news conference on Wednesday.
Americans will likely have enough safe and effective COVID-19 vaccines available to inoculate the most vulnerable individuals by the end of 2020, Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar said.
“We expect that we would have, by the end of this year, enough vaccine that is FDA-authorized to be able to vaccinate all of the most vulnerable individuals,” Azar said. “Then by the end of January, we expect we’d have enough to vaccinate all seniors, as well as our healthcare workers and first responders – and by the end of March to early April, enough vaccine for all Americans who would want to take a vaccine.”
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