California becomes second US state to top 1mn COVID-19 cases

Coronavirus is the United States (US) is getting out of control as California just became the second state to surpass 1 million infections since the start of the pandemic following Texas.

As per the Johns Hopkins University data, over 5,000 new cases and 18 new deaths have been reported so far on Thursday, for a total of 1,000,631 confirmed cases and 18,126 deaths statewide.

The health officials report that, like other states in the country, California's Covid-19 numbers are all trending in the wrong direction.

On November 9, Gov. Gavin Newsom announced the state recorded more than 7,200 new cases in a day and had a 7-day average of about 5,889 infections.

The country also reported highest number of deaths in a single-day since May as experts say is accelerating.

"That number was familiar four to six weeks ago, but since the early part of October where we were able to get those numbers down below 3,000, we haven't seen an average of 7-days above 5,800 in quite some time," Newsom said.

The number of patients hospitalised with Covid-19 had increased by 31.6% over a 14-day period, Ghaly said Tuesday.

"These really higher number of cases that we've seen over the next few days won't manifest or won't become patients in hospitals for another two to three weeks," Ghaly said.

ICU hospitalizations have also increased, Ghaly said, climbing by nearly 30% in two weeks.