Coronavirus: US records deadliest day at end of grim 2020
- US logs more than 3,900 Covid-19 deaths in new daily record
- World looks to vaccines in 2021 as global cases near 83 million
The US logged its highest ever daily death toll from the coronavirus Wednesday as the world prepared to turn the page on a grim year defined by the pandemic, with much of the globe united in one hope for 2021: that a slew of new vaccines will stamp out Covid-19.
New Year’s Eve marked one year since the World Health Organization first mentioned a mysterious pneumonia in China later identified as Covid-19, which went on in 2020 to kill almost 1.8 million people and devastate the global economy in unprecedented ways.
In the world’s worst-hit country, the US, the numbers keep climbing: on Wednesday more than 3,900 people died of Covid-19, a record, bringing the toll since the pandemic began to more than 19.7 million infections and 342,000 lives lost.
And experts believe the worst is yet to come, as US health care workers brace for a surge in cases after major holiday gatherings.
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‘Every day we struggle’, doctors overwhelmed treating Covid-19 cases in hospitals around the world
But international efforts helped develop vaccines in record time. On Wednesday Britain approved a lower-cost vaccine developed by the University of Oxford and drug firm AstraZeneca, making it the third jab to win approval in the Western world, after the Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna vaccines.