Coronavirus updates: Los Angeles County to prohibit gatherings, close playgrounds

Cases are on the rise in Southern California.

A pandemic of the novel coronavirus has now infected more than 61 million people and killed over 1.4 million worldwide, according to real-time data compiled by the Center for Systems Science and Engineering at Johns Hopkins University.


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US reports over 110,000 new cases on Thanksgiving

There were 110,611 new cases of COVID-19 confirmed in the United States on Thursday, the day of Thanksgiving, according to a real-time count kept by Johns Hopkins University.

It's the 24th straight day that the country has reported over 100,000 newly diagnosed infections. Thursday's count is down from a peak of 196,004 new cases on Nov. 20.

An additional 1,232 fatalities from COVID-19 were also registered nationwide on Thursday, less than the all-time high of 2,609 new deaths on April 15.

COVID-19 data may be skewed this week and next due to possible lags in reporting over Thanksgiving followed by a potentially very large backlog from the holiday.

A total of 12,885,299 people in the United States have been diagnosed with COVID-19 since the pandemic began, and at least 263,462 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.

Much of the country was under lockdown by the end of March as the first wave of pandemic hit. 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 100,000 for the first time on Nov. 4.


1,319 US deaths on Thanksgiving

The Covid Tracking Project reported 1,319 deaths, below the seven-day average of 1,549, on Thanksgiving, but experts caution against reading too much into data reported before next week as the holiday could prove a catalyst for the virus that's killed at least 263,196 Americans.

On Thursday, total global deaths reached at least 1,428,671.


COVID-19 has killed over 30,000 Americans so far this month

More than 30,000 people in the United States have died from COVID-19 so far this month, according to an ABC News analysis of data collected and published by the COVID Tracking Project.

Of those deaths, 11,507 were reported in just the last seven days. That's about one American death from COVID-19 reported every minute.

The country's COVID-19 death rate has been steadily rising for the past month. Since Oct. 25, the seven-day average of U.S. daily deaths from the disease has doubled, increasing by 103%.

The increase in deaths follows weeks of surging case numbers across the country. The United States is now reporting an average of over 172,000 new cases of COVID-19 per day.

More than 3.5 million cases were recorded in the month of November so far, including at least 22 straight days where over 100,000 new cases were reported. There were 1.2 million cases reported in the last week alone, which means one in every 271 Americans tested positive for COVID-19.

On Wednesday, two of the country's largest states, California and Texas, both reported their highest single-day case count to date. They are the only two states in the nation to surpass 1 million total cases.

ABC News' Benjamin Bell, Brian Hartman, Soorin Kim and Arielle Mitropoulos contributed to this report.


TSA screens record number of travelers since pandemic began

More than 1 million people went through airport security checkpoints across the United States on Wednesday, the day before Thanksgiving, despite public health guidance against traveling for the holiday.

The Transportation Security Administration (TSA) screened 1,070,967 individuals on Wednesday, the highest amount since the coronavirus pandemic was declared in mid-March. The previous pandemic record was set on Sunday, when TSA screened 1,047,934 people.

Last week, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said it is recommending that Americans do not travel for Thanksgiving.

"It's not a requirement, it's a recommendation for the American public to consider," Dr. Henry Walke, the CDC's COVID-19 incident manager, told reporters during a call on Nov. 19. "Right now, as we're seeing exponential growth in cases and the opportunity to translocate disease or infection from one part of the country to another leads to our recommendation to avoid travel at this time."

ABC News' Gio Benitez contributed to this report.


COVID-19 patient with 'irreversible lung damage' recovers after transplant

A COVID-19 patient whose lungs had been severely damaged by the virus has made a miraculous recovery after undergoing a double lung transplant at a Texas hospital.

Paul Rodriguez, 52, of San Antonio, had no pre-existing conditions when he contracted the novel coronavirus and fell ill with pneumonia in July. Rodriguez was hospitalized at an area hospital in his hometown and required intubation as well as the use of a ventilator. Then in mid-September, Rodriguez was transferred to Baylor St. Luke's Medical Center in Houston for evaluation, "as it became clear that a lung transplant was his only chance of survival," according to a press release from the hospital, which said the patient had "irreversible lung damage."

Rodriguez was approved for a transplant and, within a week of listing, he received a brand-new set of lungs on Oct. 15. After being successfully weaned off the ventilator and oxygen support, Rodriguez underwent rehabilitation at Baylor St. Luke's Medical Center and was discharged on Nov. 24. He is expected to continue the rehabilitation program as part of his recovery, according to the press release.

"Rodriguez is the first double lung transplant the hospital has performed on a coronavirus patient since the pandemic began," Baylor St. Luke's Medical Center said in a statement. "To date, only a handful of transplant centers in the U.S. have performed lung transplants on patients due to irreversible lung damage caused by the virus."