Coronavirus news: US daily death toll from COVID-19 shoots back up over 1,000
There were 1,206 new deaths in the U.S. in the last 24 hours.
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.
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India reports another record rise in cases
India confirmed 95,735 new cases of COVID-19 in the past 24 hours, marking yet another single-day record increase in infections across the country.
The country’s cumulative total now stands at 4.46 million cases with 75,062 deaths, after another 1,172 fatalities in the last 24 hours, according to the latest data from the Indian Ministry of Health and Family Welfare.
India has the second-highest tally of cases in the world and the third-highest death toll in the coronavirus pandemic, according to a count kept by Johns Hopkins University.
India's health ministry said the surge in new infections is due to increased testing, with more than 1 million tests now being conducted each day across the vast country of 1.3 billion people. So far, nearly 3.3 million people in India have recovered from COVID-19.
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.
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.
FDA chief says he will not overrule scientists' recommendation on vaccine
FDA Chief Stephen Hahn reiterated on Thursday that any FDA decision on a COVID-19 vaccine will be based on the science and data from clinical trials.
Hahn said the career experts in FDA's Center for Biologics Research make decisions on whether to recommend vaccines for approval and he has no plan to contradict them.
"I can tell you throughout this pandemic, throughout my tenure as commissioner, I have not reversed a decision by the career scientists on medical products and I have no intention of doing that now," he said, adding, "We will independently call the balls and strikes."
He responded to concerns the FDA would speed up or slow down vaccine authorizations to impact the election.
"[W]e find ourselves in the position that we're accused of either going too fast or too slow or doing too little or too much. And I suppose, where we land up is if we're hearing criticism from both sides, we're probably in the right place," Hahn said. "At the end of the day, for us, it's about the risk benefit calculus, particularly during a pandemic like COVID-19, and we do need to call the balls and strikes on medical products and we do need to use the available data."