COVID-19 records tumble in US

WASHINGTON－The US hit a record number of coronavirus cases on Tuesday in a nationwide surge in infections that has added 1 million confirmed infections in just the first 10 days of November.

As the worst-hit nation sinks deeper into its pandemic mire, European nations are also posting large increases in cases of COVID-19.

In the US, 201,214 cases were reported in a 24-hour period, a dramatic development in a country that had crossed 100,000 daily infections only recently, according to a tally released on Tuesday by Johns Hopkins University in Maryland.

The 10,230,770 cases reported nationwide so far account for nearly one-fifth of the global tally, which stands at about 51 million.

The new wave appears bigger and more widespread than the surges that happened in the spring and summer－and threatens to be worse.

Newly confirmed infections in the US were running at all-time highs of well over 100,000 per day, pushing the total to more than 10 million. There are now 61,964 people hospitalized, according to the COVID Tracking Project.

"The virus is spreading in a largely uncontrolled fashion across the vast majority of the country," said William Schaffner, an infectious-disease expert at Vanderbilt University.

In other developments, United Nations Undersecretary-General for Peace Operations Jean-Pierre Lacroix has tested positive for the coronavirus.

The diagnosis was made while Lacroix was in Portugal, where he was scheduled to attend a meeting of the UN Security Council, Stephane Dujarric, spokesman for UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, said on Tuesday.

Local authorities notified

Lacroix has notified local authorities and isolated himself in Lisbon after receiving the test result. He is asymptomatic and will remain isolated for the required number of days. Contact tracing was immediately implemented.

Elsewhere in Europe, Britain on Tuesday added 532 deaths from the previous day. The figure marked the highest number for a day since mid-May, according to official figures.

The new deaths brought the total coronavirus-related fatalities in Britain to 49,770, and the total number of cases in the country rose to 1,233,775.

Earlier on Tuesday, Dido Harding, the chief of Britain's National Health Service test and trace program, acknowledged that the system had failed to predict the scale of demand for testing as schools and universities returned this autumn.

In Italy, five regions and one province from a declared yellow zone (signaling low risk) were moved to the orange zone (medium risk) on Tuesday, according to the three-tier system of restrictions implemented by the government to slow down the second wave of the pandemic.

It came as the country registered 35,098 new coronavirus cases on Tuesday, bringing the total number to 995,463.

In all, Europe had reported some 12.8 million cases and about 300,114 deaths by Tuesday.

Xinhua - Agencies