While attention is fixed on vote counting in the US presidential election, the US continues to break records with new daily COVID-19 cases.
ADVERTISEMENTThe United States recorded more than 127,000 positive coronavirus cases in 24 hours on Friday, a record number of infections for the third consecutive day, according to a landmark Johns Hopkins University count.
The country's attention was been diverted this week with the US presidential elections, elections which largely took place by mail because of the pandemic.
The country counted precisely 127,021 new cases between Thursday and Friday, according to a survey carried out at 8:30 pm local time by AFP of the university's figures, which are continuously updated.
At the same time, 1,149 people died from COVID-19 in the US, by far the most bereaved country in the world.
If the number of deaths deplored each day is far from having risen to the levels reached in the spring, it is the fourth consecutive day that the country has recorded more than 1,000 deaths daily, which had not happened since August.
The US recorded a total of more than 236,000 deaths on Friday evening since the start of the pandemic, with 9.7 million cases.
The pandemic was one of the main issues between Donald Trump and Joe Biden during the presidential campaign, the results of which were still expected Friday evening, with counts still underway in several key states.
Due in part to the virus, a new record was set as tens of millions of Americans voted by mail this year and these ballots are taking longer to be counted.
In the last presidential debate at the end of October, President Trump defended his handling of the pandemic response in the US, adding that the country was "rounding the corner".
"It will go away and, as I say, we're rounding the turn," he said. "We're rounding the corner. It's going away",
Above all, the pandemic has plunged the country into the worst health crisis since the Spanish flu of 1918 and the worst recession since the 1929 crisis.