According to data received from Johns Hopkins University, the United States set a new world record on Monday after the country registered over one million fresh cases of the deadly coronavirus.
The new record is coming as the Omicron variant is spreading at a blistering pace in the country.
President Joe Biden has consistently encouraged his citizens to be vaccinated. On his Facebook page on Tuesday, he wrote, “Folks, get vaccinated.”
It was reported that there were 1,080,211 new cases in the country, although the number of cases reported on a Monday is usually higher than other days because of delays in weekend tallying, especially after such a three-day holiday weekend.
Still, the figure is higher than the number of daily cases compared to the previous Monday.
The rolling average over seven days which experts see as more reliable was 486,000 cases per day as of Monday evening, the university said.
The new figure comes a day after top US pandemic advisor Anthony Fauci said the country was experiencing “almost a vertical increase” in Covid-19 cases, adding that the peak may be only weeks away.
The heavily mutated Omicron strain is the most transmissible to date and accounted for around 59 per cent of US cases in the week ending December 25, according to government modeling.
