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Covid: US reports record 1m cases with peak still to come

The US is also starting to see an increase in the number of hospital admissions.

President Biden has again urged unvaccinated people in the United States to get their Covid-19 jabs. His call comes as cases surge in the US to a record global high of one million daily infections, and the number of hospitalised patients surges by nearly 50% in the past week.

Newsday asked Peter Hotez - Professor of Paediatrics and Molecular Virology at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, Texas and author of "Preventing the next pandemic" - what a million cases in a day means to him.

“The irony is the one-million is probably an under-estimate because of so many people who have been unable to get tested. We have to face the reality that this is not going to be associated with herd immunity.â€

“The president made a comment that the US leads all countries in providing 275 million doses to 100 countries. But... we need 9 billion doses for the African continent, South-east Asia and Latin America.â€

“We need to make a concerted effort to vaccinate the world’s low and middle income countries. And that’s the only way to counteract this – to vaccinate the entire planet.â€

(Pic: A woman getting a Covid swab test. Credit: Getty Images)

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