More than 2.4 million COVID-19 cases have been recorded in the US in the past week – the most since the pandemic began, according to new data.
The new statistic beats out the previous record of just over the 2 million cases recorded almost exactly a year ago for the seven days between Dec. 26, 2020, through Jan. 1, 2021 — and comes amid the fast-paced spread of the highly-contagious Omicron variant, according to data from Johns Hopkins University.
The current seven-day average for new daily cases in the US is 355,990, Johns Hopkins rep Jill Rosen told The Post on Friday.
On Thursday, several states helped fuel the dismal new record by setting their own personal highs in new cases, including Louisiana, where the 24-hour daily total of 12,467 new infections was more than a third above the 9,378 from the day before, Gov. John Bel Edwards said, according to USA Today.
On the more positive side, the US’s weekly death count isn’t approaching record levels, with 8,878 people succumbing to the illness in the past week – early potential evidence that the surging variant causes less severe infections, despite it being more transmissible.
The most deaths recorded during the coronavirus pandemic in the US in a single week occurred between Jan. 10-16 of this year, when 23,415 died.
Meanwhile, more than 54.2 million confirmed COVID-19 cases and more than 824,000 deaths have been recorded in the US in all, according to Johns Hopkins.
The data come as more than 205.8 million people in the US – about 62 percent of the population – are fully vaccinated, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.