Nearly 3,000 people died from COVID-19 in the past day and hospitalizations rose to just below 113,000, to mark a 10th-straight daily record, just days before another vaccine was expected to be authorized for emergency use.
A Food and Drug Administration advisory committee is scheduled to meet Thursday to discuss the risks and benefits of Moderna Inc.’s
MRNA,
COVID-19 vaccine candidate known as mRNA-1273. That is the final regulatory step before the FDA decides whether to grant mRNA-1273 emergency use authorization (EUA), which the FDA is widely expected to do.
Don’t miss: Moderna nears its first-ever FDA authorization, for its COVID-19 vaccine.
That would follow the EUA granted last week to Pfizer Inc.’s
PFE,
and BioNTech SE’s
BNTX,
vaccine, which has been rolling out nationwide this week.
And France-based biotechnology company Valneva SE
INRLF,
VLA,
will start the first clinical trials of its COVID-19 vaccine candidate across the U.K., the U.K. government said Wednesday. That’s the fifth vaccine candidate to enter clinical trials in the U.K., as MarketWatch’s Lina Saigol reported. The others include those of AstraZeneca PLC
AZN,
AZN,
and the University of Oxford, Novavax Inc.
NVAX,
and Johnson & Johnson’s
JNJ,
Janssen Pharmaceuticals.
Optimism over vaccine rollouts is tempered by the reality that new cases and deaths continue to surge across the country and world.
There were 201,649 new cases were reported in the U.S. on Tuesday, after 201,073 new cases reported the day before, according to data provided by the New York Times. At least 2,957 people died on Tuesday from COVID-19, up from 1,678 on Monday.
On average, there have been 206,557 cases per day over the past week, 28% more than the average two weeks ago.
The U.S. has recorded 16,813,837 COVID-19 cases as of Wednesday afternoon and 305,723 deaths, according to data compiled by Johns Hopkins University.
New York Times
Hospitalizations rose to 112,816 patients on Tuesday, up from the previous day’s record of 110,549, to mark the 10th-straight day of new records.
The grim numbers are likely to keep growing over the near term, as 47 states had positivity rates for COVID-19 tests of over 5%, which the World Health Organization deemed a dangerous threshold, and 28 states had positivity rates of more than 10%, JHU data show.
Latest global tallies
The number of global confirmed cases of COVID-19 grew to 73,881,356 on Wednesday, according to JHU data, as the death toll reached 1,643,707. At least 41.8 million people have recovered.
The U.S. was by far the world leader as it accounted for 22.8% of the cases and 18.6% of the deaths.
Brazil had the second most deaths at 182,799 and third most cases at 6,970,034, while India was second in cases at 9,932,547 and third in deaths at 144,096.
Mexico was fourth in deaths at 115,099 and 13th in cases at 1,267,202.
Italy had the fifth most deaths globally, and the most in Europe, at 66,537, and was eighth globally in cases at 1,888,144. The U.K. was sixth with a death toll of 65,618, and was seventh in cases at 1,918,729.
Russia was fourth globally, and led Europe with 2,708,940 cases. Germany was 15th in deaths at 23,865 and 12th in cases at 1,406,059.
China, where the virus was first discovered late last year, has had 94,619 confirmed cases and 4,757 deaths.