US reports over 63,000 new cases in highest daily count since August
There were 63,610 new cases of COVID-19 identified in the United States on Thursday, the country's highest daily tally since Aug. 14, according to a real-time count kept by Johns Hopkins University.
The latest daily tally is up by more than 4,000 from the previous day but still under the country’s record set on July 16, when there were 77,255 new cases in a 24-hour-reporting period.
An additional 904 coronavirus-related fatalities were also recorded Thursday, slightly less than the previous day and down from a peak of 2,666 new fatalities reported on April 17.
A total of 7,980,461 people in the United States have been diagnosed with COVID-19 since the pandemic began, and at least 217,700 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. The daily tally of new cases has gradually come down since then but has started to climb again in recent weeks.
The number of new COVID-19 cases recorded in the United States continued to increase by double digits in week-over-week comparisons, while the number of new deaths from the disease continued to tick downward slightly, according to an internal memo from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services that was obtained by ABC News on Wednesday night.