The US had also reported a new record of nearly 4,000 deaths the day before, while around 131,000 people are currently being hospitalized.
The US set a new record for coronavirus cases on Friday, hitting nearly 290,000 in 24 hours, according to a real-time tally from Johns Hopkins University.
The country hardest hit by the COVID-19 pandemic also recorded 3,676 virus deaths on the same day, the Baltimore-based university said.
The day before, the US had reported a record of nearly 4,000 deaths within 24 hours.
According to the COVID Tracking Project, 131,000 people are currently hospitalized for COVID-19 in the US.
The world’s largest economy has seen 21.8 million coronavirus cases and more than 368,000 deaths since the pandemic began.
The country, where health restrictions vary drastically between locations, is ultimately counting on a huge vaccination campaign that was launched in mid-December to end the health crisis.
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Meanwhile, a spokesman for President-elect Joe Biden said his administration could accelerate the distribution of COVID-19 vaccines to U.S. states in order to accelerate the slow roll-out of vaccinations that had little impact on the pandemic for a week New year.
One such move by Biden, when he takes office on Jan. 20, would be a departure from a Trump administration strategy to retain enough doses to ensure the required second doses of the vaccines are available.
It would also require that Pfizer Inc, partner BioNTech SE and Moderna Inc, maker of the first two government-approved coronavirus vaccines for use in the United States, be able to maintain an even supply so that second shots can be administered on schedule .
“The president-elect believes we need to accelerate the spread of the vaccine while making sure that the Americans who need it most get it as soon as possible,” TJ Ducklo, a spokesman for Biden’s transition, told the Reuters news agency.
According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), by Friday, around 6.6 million people across the country had received an initial injection of the two-shot vaccines from the 22 million doses shipped. Some Americans got their second dose this week.
That number is well below the 20 million vaccinations the Trump administration promised to give by the end of 2020 as the pandemic spiraled out of control with infections, hospitalizations and deaths rising.
“The goal must be to get vaccines from freezers into people’s arms, and I think we should take the first doses and rely on the manufacturing process to get the second doses off on time,” said Dr. Amesh Adalja, Senior Scholar at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security.
“I would also like to add that it is less about the supply than the actual physical administration of the vaccine. So this must be combined with the possibility of training vaccination clinics, mass vaccination centers and vaccinations,” Adalja said.
The delay was partly attributed to strict US state rules that control who should be vaccinated first. These plans were complicated by some health care workers at the head of the line who turned down the shots and left the cans unused.
The CDC has stated that healthcare workers and residents and nursing home workers should take precedence over limited vaccine supplies. On Friday, the agency softened those guidelines and recommended states move on to the next on the list: people over 75 and so-called “essential” workers.
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