WASHINGTON (dpa-AFX) - The United States on Tuesday completed two straight weeks of recording more than 100,000 coronavirus infections a day.
With 1,54,319 new cases reporting in the last 24 hours, the country's total number of COVID-19 infections increased to 11359804, as per latest data from the Johns Hopkins University Center for Systems Science and Engineering.
1467 new deaths in the same period took the total casualties to 248687.
With COVID-19 cases surging across the country, long-term care facilities experienced their largest increase in six months. The LTC case surge is concentrated in the Midwest, mirroring the pattern of the US pandemic as a whole, according to Covid Tracking Project.
Last week, states reported 29,606 new COVID-19 cases in nursing homes, assisted living facilities, and other long-term care facilities. This represents a 17 percent increase, the highest weekly rise since the pandemic began.
There are around 44,500 long-term care facilities in the United States, according to a 2019 report from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Pharmaceutical giant Pfizer Inc. (PFE) and German biotech firm BioNTech SE (BNTX) said Wednesday that final data analysis from the Phase 3 study of their coronavirus vaccine candidate, BNT162b2, showed the vaccine to be 95 percent effective in preventing COVID-19. Shares of Pfizer rose more than 4 percent in the pre-market trade following the news.
Meanwhile, top U.S. medical bodies urged President Donald Trump to share Covid data with President-elect Joe Biden.
The California Department of Public Health issued updated guidance requiring people in the state to wear a mask or face covering when they are outside of their home.
France became the first European country to record 2 million confirmed cases of coronavirus.
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