US marks 1 year since confirming its 1st case
Wednesday marks one year since the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention confirmed the first case of COVID-19 in the United States.
It wouldn't be until several months later that scientists identified the virus that caused COVID-19 in blood samples from people in various U.S. states as early as December 2019.
Since the first confirmed case 365 days ago, more than 24.2 million people in the U.S. have tested positive for COVID-19, which means that approximately one in every 13 Americans have contracted the disease, according to data collected by Johns Hopkins University.
At least 402,400 lives in the U.S. have been lost to COVID-19, representing approximately 19.5% of the worldwide death toll from the disease. That means one in every 823 Americans have now died from COVID-19.
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New York remains the worst-hit U.S. state in terms of COVID-19 deaths -- with more than 37,000 confirmed fatalities -- followed by Texas, California and Florida.
Since the start of the pandemic, nearly 763,000 people in the U.S. have been hospitalized with COVID-19. Just under 124,000 people nationwide are currently hospitalized with the disease. In the last two weeks, that number has declined by 5.6%, according to data compiled by The COVID Tracking Project, a volunteer-run effort to track the U.S. outbreak.
January has already proven to be one of the worst months on record for the U.S. outbreak. In the first 19 days of 2021, the country has confirmed more than 4.15 million cases and over 55,000 deaths from the disease.
Although the numbers are currently impacted by the holiday weekend, the U.S. continues to see a drop in new infections, now averaging approximately 197,000 newly confirmed cases per day, according to The COVID Tracking Project.
ABC News' Brian Hartman and Arielle Mitropoulos contributed to this report.