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Record 100,000 new COVID cases reported in US day after election

Thursday, 05 November 2020 9:41 AM [ Last Update: Thursday, 05 November 2020 9:41 AM ]

US electoral workers at curbside voting in St. Charles County for voters who have coronavirus disease (COVID-19), during Election Day in Missouri, US, November 3, 2020. (Photo by Reuters)

The United States sets yet another record for daily coronavirus cases and hospitalization, amid a post-election unrest that is expected to contribute to further spreading of the deadly virus.

Health officials recorded at least 102,591 new COVID-19 cases on Wednesday, according to a Reuters tally.

Nine states reported record one-day increases in cases including, Washington, Michigan, Minnesota, and Wisconsin.

Hospitalizations also topped 50,000, on Tuesday, for the first time in three months.

Daily new cases across the nation have increased 45% over the past two weeks to a record seven-day average of 86,352, according Johns Hopkins University data.

Virus-related deaths were also on the rise, up 15% to an average of 846 deaths every day.

So far, a total number of 9,486,486 people have been infected and some 233,729 others lost their lives to the virus across the US.

The country is averaging 850 deaths a day, up from 700 a month ago.

The grim statistics come as health experts have already warned about worsening the spread of the disease in the weeks prior to the election.

President Donald Trump, however, repeatedly brushed away the alarm during his campaign rallies, attended by thousands of people, with most of them wearing no masks.

During one of his final campaign rallies, Trump threatened to fire Director of the National Institute of Allergy, Anthony Fauci, who dismissed the president’s remarks that the pandemic was going to “end quickly.”

Fauci said that the US won’t “start having some semblance of normality” until “the end of 2021 and perhaps into the next year.”

Trump had repeatedly disagreed with Fauci on COVID-19, including social-distancing guidelines and masks wearing, calling the doctor as “a little bit of an alarmist.”