US approaches half million new COVID-19 cases each week: report

WASHINGTON -- The United States is approaching half a million new COVID-19 cases each week, according to a report of The COVID Tracking Project released on Thursday.

This week, about 435,000 Americans were diagnosed with COVID-19, the fourth week of big increases in the number of new cases, according to the report.

As of July 15, more than 56,000 people are currently in the hospital with COVID-19 in the United States. A total of 4,872 more people have died of COVID-19 across the country, an increase of nearly 29 percent from the previous week, according to the report.

States with major outbreaks including Arizona, California, Florida, and Texas all saw record high weekly hospitalizations and deaths. Meanwhile, worsening outbreaks in many other states threaten to increase the pandemic's death toll in the coming weeks.

This week, U.S. states and territories reported more than 5 million COVID-19 tests in a single week.

The Harvard Global Health Institute estimates that the United States will need to perform at least 8.4 million tests per week to slow the spread of the virus, and 30 million tests per week to suppress the pandemic.

The COVID Tracking Project is a volunteer organization launched from The Atlantic and dedicated to collecting and publishing the data required to understand the COVID-19 outbreak in the United States.