California's runaway cases strain hospitals

As the coronavirus deepens its grip on the world, California has become the first state in the United States to record more than 3 million infections and Britain has suffered another record for single-day deaths.

The California Department of Public Health on Wednesday confirmed 22,403 new COVID-19 infections in an update, pushing its cumulative cases to 3,019,371. The state is the most populous US state with around 40 million residents.

Since the start of the pandemic, it took about 10 months for California to reach the threshold of 1 million confirmed cases on Nov 13,2020, and a further six weeks to reach the 2 million mark on Dec 24. The state went on to hit the 3 million level in four weeks.

On Wednesday the state also reported its second-highest number of COVID-19 deaths, at 694, behind the record of 708 reported on Jan 8.

Hospitals throughout the state remain overwhelmed with patients seeking treatment and about 90 percent of the state is under stay-at-home orders due in part to limited capacity in intensive care units, according to a report from CNN.

California's rollout of vaccinations has been frustratingly slow since the country started its mass vaccination in late December, but the state authority said recently that the state is making steady progress in the vaccination campaign.

"Today we are reporting 1,525,815 doses administered, so this exceeds our 1 million doses goal," California Health and Human Services Secretary Mark Ghaly said on Tuesday in an update.

"We still have data coming in. It's very much like testing was, where even if a test was administered on a certain day, it took a few days for the data system to catch up and count it as a test," said Ghaly, adding that the state is still tallying up the latest information.

According to the latest data from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, as of Wednesday, California had administered around 1,532, 300 shots of the more than 4.2 million doses received from the federal government. This works out to 3,878 doses per 100,000 residents, one of the slowest rates in the US.

Fresh high

In the United Kingdom, the fresh record for single-day deaths on Wednesday shaded the previous day's all-time high.

The government said 1,820 people died in the latest 24-hour period, taking the country's total to 93,290. This is Europe's highest virus-related death toll and the fifth highest in the world. On Wednesday, the UK recorded another 38,905 new cases, below the seven-day average of nearly 60,000 earlier this month.

The lockdown restrictions across the UK have helped reduce the number of people contracting the virus, although the country is still recording high levels of infections when compared with other nations in Europe, such as France or Germany.

In France, the health ministry reported on Wednesday over 26,000 new cases over the latest 24-hour period, the highest since Nov 18, 2020.

Epidemiologist Odile Launay said France will probably need a third national lockdown if the current curfew fails to rein in the spread of the coronavirus.

"We should seriously consider a lockdown limited to vulnerable people," said Launay, also a member of the French national vaccine committee.

Despite the gloomy COVID-19 situation worldwide, Sri Lanka is welcoming tourists again after keeping the doors closed to visitors for nearly 10 months due to the pandemic.

Under the reopening, visitors must be tested in their country 72 hours prior to their flight, when they arrive at their hotel and again seven days later. They will be allowed to travel in 14 tourism zones in a "travel bubble", without mixing with local people. About 180 hotels have been earmarked to provide accommodation for the tourists.

Liu Yinmeng in Los Angeles, Xinhua and agencies contributed to this story.