For the second consecutive day, the United States reported a record number of coronavirus cases, according to NBC News national data counts.
The country reported 278,920 new cases of Covid-19 on Saturday, surpassing Friday’s one-day record of 269,420.
On Saturday, 3,603 people died in the United States from causes related to the virus, but that was not a record. The death toll on Thursday, 4,110, marked the last peak of pandemic mortality in the United States.
The figures reflect a predicted deadly increase in coronavirus cases linked to travel and holidays.
The US surpassed 22 million cases on Friday since the pandemic began.
California was particularly hard hit during the increase, with 52,636 cases and 695 deaths reported as of Friday.
Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, told a group in Virginia called Facts & Faith on Friday that if vaccinations are completed for a wide range of people in the U.S. by the end of the summer, the nation “may begin to approach reasonable normality in the fall of 2021.”
