Samara Heisz/iStockBy MORGAN WINSOR, ERIN SCHUMAKER, IVAN PEREIRA and EMILY SHAPIRO, ABC News

(NEW YORK) — A pandemic of the novel coronavirus has now infected more than 64.5 million people and killed over 1.4 million worldwide, according to real-time data compiled by the Center for Systems Science and Engineering at Johns Hopkins University.

Here’s how the news is developing Thursday. All times Eastern:

Dec 03, 3:52 am
US reports over 200,000 new cases for second time since pandemic started

There were 200,007 new cases of COVID-19 confirmed in the United States on Wednesday, according to a real-time count kept by Johns Hopkins University.

It’s the 30th straight day that the United States has reported over 100,000 newly diagnosed infections, and only the second time since the start of the pandemic that the figure has exceeded 200,000. Wednesday’s count is just under the country’s peak of 205,557 new cases recorded last Friday, according to Johns Hopkins data.

An additional 3,157 fatalities from COVID-19 were also registered nationwide on Wednesday, marking a new all-time high. It’s also the first time that the United States has reported more than 3,000 deaths from the disease in a single day. The latest daily death toll shatters the previous record of 2,609 new deaths on April 15, according to Johns Hopkins data.

COVID-19 data over the past week and in the coming days may be skewed due to possible lags in reporting over Thanksgiving followed by a potentially very large backlog from the holiday.

A total of 13,924,956 people in the United States have been diagnosed with COVID-19 since the pandemic began, and at least 273,835 of them have died, according to Johns Hopkins data. The cases include people from all 50 U.S. states, Washington, D.C., and other U.S. territories as well as repatriated citizens.

Much of the country was under lockdown by the end of March as the first wave of pandemic hit. By May 20, all U.S. states had begun lifting stay-at-home orders and other restrictions put in place to curb the spread of the novel coronavirus. The day-to-day increase in the country’s cases then hovered around 20,000 for a couple of weeks before shooting back up over the summer.

The numbers lingered around 40,000 to 50,000 from mid-August through early October before surging again to record levels, crossing 100,000 for the first time on Nov. 4 and reaching 200,000 for the first time on Nov. 27.

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