U.S. counts record of almost 4,000 COVID-19 deaths in a day as virus continues to wreak havoc

As the political drama unfolded in Washington, D.C. on Wednesday, COVID-19 continued to wreak havoc in the U.S., claiming a record of almost 4,000 American lives, the most in a single day since the start of the outbreak.

There were at least 3,963 COVID-19 deaths, according to a New York Times tracker, and another 255,730 cases were diagnosed. The U.S. has averaged 230,610 cases a day for the past week, numbers that are higher than the worst case scenarios envisaged by experts early in the crisis.

There were a record of 132,476 COVID-19 patients in U.S. hospitals, according to the COVID Tracking Project, beating the record of 131,215 set a day ago.

Several states, including New Hampshire, Oklahoma and Pennsylvania, set single-day records for deaths, and Illinois joined four other states — California, New York, Florida and Texas — which have reported more than a million cases.