Since the Covid-19 pandemic started to surpass 10 million infections, the United States has become the first nation worldwide, as the third wave of virus surges across the nation.
On the same day, the grim milestone came as worldwide coronavirus cases exceeded 50 million.
Over the past 10 days, the United States has reported about a million cases, the highest rate of infections since the nation reported its first novel coronavirus case 293 days ago in Washington state.
According to a Reuters tally, the country reported a record of 131,420 cases on Saturday and has reported over 100,000 infections five times in the past seven days.
The seven-day average of 105,600 daily cases reported by the US most recently, raised by at least 29 percent, is higher than the combined average for India and France, two of Asia and Europe's worst-affected countries.
Since the disease caused by the coronavirus first emerged in China late last year, over 237,000 Americans have died of Covid-19.
According to a Reuters analysis, the daily average of new deaths reported in the United States accounts for one in every 11 deaths reported worldwide each day.
For a fifth consecutive day on Saturday, the number of reported deaths nationwide climbed by more than 1,000, a trend last seen in mid-August, according to a Reuters tally.
Health experts say deaths tend to increase after an increase in infections over four to six weeks.
On Saturday, US President-elect Joe Biden, who spent much of his election campaign criticizing the handling of the pandemic by President Donald Trump, pledged to make tackling the pandemic a top priority.
On Monday, Biden will announce a 12-member task force to deal with the pandemic that will be led by former surgeon general Vivek Murthy and former commissioner David Kessler of the Food and Drug Administration.
Once Biden takes office in January, the coronavirus task force will be charged with developing a blueprint for containing the disease.
The Midwest remains the hardest-hit region, with the top five worst-hit US states being North Dakota, South Dakota, Wisconsin, Iowa, and Nebraska, based on the most cases per capita.
According to Reuters data, Illinois has emerged as the new epicenter in the Midwest, with the state reporting over 60,000 infections over the past seven days, the highest in the country.
On Saturday, the state reported over 12,454 new cases, the highest single-day number so far.
The hardest-hit state is Texas, which accounts for 10 percent of total US cases, and on Saturday became the first to surpass a million coronavirus cases in the United States.
According to a Reuters analysis, since the pandemic began, the South region accounts for almost 43 percent of all cases in the United States, with almost 4.3 million cases in the region alone, followed by the Midwest, West, and Northeast.
With over 33,000 fatalities, New York remains the state with the highest number of fatalities, accounting for about 14 percent of all US fatalities.
According to data from The COVID Tracking Project, a voluntary effort to track the outbreak, the United States performed about 10.5 million coronavirus tests in the first seven days of November, 6.22 percent of which returned positive, compared with 6.17 percent in the previous seven days.
