The United States reported over 160,000 new coronavirus cases on Tuesday, setting a record as the runaway pandemic continued its spread across the country.
The fresh addition lifted the country’s caseload to 10,205,207, including a total of 239,274 deaths, as of 16:25 U.S. Eastern Time on Tuesday, according data from Johns Hopkins University.
The U.S. remains the worst-hit country in terms of total confirmed cases and deaths in the world.
While sitting for interviews with the Cable News Network (CNN) on Monday, Michael Osterholm, director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota, predicted the United States could hit over 200,000 new cases a day in the next weeks.
Scott Gottlieb, former commissioner of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, warned that the coronavirus pandemic is “about to explode” across the United States as the country registered over 10 million coronavirus cases on Monday, a grim milestone just 10 days after reaching the nine-million mark.
The average daily cases and deaths in the past seven days have been on a sharp rise, and stood at 104,417 and 950, respectively, as of Sunday, according to Monday’s data from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
The seven-day daily case count set a record since the onset of the pandemic while the number of the seven-day daily death tally was a new high since September.