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Coronavirus news: US daily death toll shoots back up over 1,000

There were 1,206 new deaths in the U.S. in the last 24 hours.

ByMorgan Winsor and Karma Allen
Last Updated: September 11, 2020, 9:32 AM EDT

A pandemic of the novel coronavirus has now killed more than 906,000 people worldwide.

Over 27.9 million people across the globe have been diagnosed with COVID-19, the disease caused by the new respiratory virus, according to data compiled by the Center for Systems Science and Engineering at Johns Hopkins University. The criteria for diagnosis -- through clinical means or a lab test -- has varied from country-to-country. Still, the actual numbers are believed to be much higher due to testing shortages, many unreported cases and suspicions that some national governments are hiding or downplaying the scope of their outbreaks.

Since the first cases were detected in China in December, the virus has rapidly spread to every continent except Antarctica.

The United States is the worst-affected country, with more than 6.39 million diagnosed cases and at least 191,612 deaths.

California has the most cases of any U.S. state, with more than 749,000 people diagnosed, according to Johns Hopkins data. California is followed by Texas and Florida, with over 669,000 cases and over 654,000 cases, respectively.

Nearly 170 vaccine candidates for COVID-19 are being tracked by the World Health Organization, at least six of which are in crucial phase three trials.

Latest headlines:

Here's how the news developed Thursday. All times Eastern.
Sep 10, 2020, 4:09 AM EDT

US daily death toll shoots back up over 1,000

An additional 1,206 coronavirus-related fatalities were recorded in the United States on Wednesday, a nearly threefold increase from the previous day, according to a real-time count kept by Johns Hopkins University.

The country's latest daily death toll from COVID-19 -- the highest since Aug. 26 -- is still under its record set on April 17, when there were 2,666 new fatalities in a 24-hour reporting period.

There were also 34,256 new cases of COVID-19 confirmed across the United States on Wednesday, down from a peak of 77,255 new cases reported on July 16.

Photographs of some of the health care workers who died from COVID-19 are displayed during a vigil in Alhambra, California, on Sept. 1, 2020.
Frederic J. Brown/AFP via Getty Images

A total of 6,336,107 people in the United States have been diagnosed with COVID-19 since the pandemic began, and at least 190,869 of them have died, according to Johns Hopkins. The cases include people from all 50 U.S. states, Washington, D.C. and other U.S. territories as well as repatriated citizens.

By May 20, all U.S. states had begun lifting stay-at-home orders and other restrictions put in place to curb the spread of the novel coronavirus. The day-to-day increase in the country's cases then hovered around 20,000 for a couple of weeks before shooting back up and crossing 70,000 for the first time in mid-July.

Last week, an internal memo from the Federal Emergency Management Agency obtained by ABC News showed the number of new COVID-19 cases in the United States had ticked upward while new deaths had decreased in week-over-week comparisons.

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