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U.S. reports 484,000 new COVID-19 cases, setting world record

Published on

December 30, 2021

A man is tested for COVID-19 (Credit: Bruno Stier/PMQB)

More than 484,000 new coronavirus cases were reported in the U.S. on Wednesday, by far the biggest one-day increase on record as the Omicron variant fuels unprecedented surges around the world.

Health departments across the U.S. reported 484,377 new cases on Wednesday, an increase of 99% from last week, according to data from the BNO News/NewsNodes tracker. This marks the biggest one-day increase for any country in the world.

The states reporting the highest numbers of new cases are: New York (67,090), Florida (46,923), Michigan (29,275 for a two-day period), New Jersey (26,473), Illinois (21,098), California (20,748), Ohio (20,320), and Georgia (19,124).

The rolling 7-day average for daily cases is 302,132, up from 94,428 a month ago, and every single U.S. state is now marked as having high levels of COVID-19 transmission, according to the CDC, which estimates that nearly 59% of daily cases are caused by the highly-contagious Omicron variant.

The number of hospital patients with COVID-19 has also surged over the past three days after mostly small increases during the past few weeks. The tally reached 84,293 on Wednesday, an increase of 5,594, which marks the biggest jump since July 2020.

Nearly 2,000 deaths were reported on Wednesday, taking the U.S. death toll to 824,708.