US sees daily record of 40,000 new coronavirus cases

By Beyza Binnur Donmez

ANKARA (AA) - The US has recorded an all-time daily high coronavirus infections with 40,000 new cases on Thursday, according to Johns Hopkins University's data.

Recent spikes in cases and hospitalizations forced some states including Texas, Florida and Arizona to pause their reopenings or reimpose new restrictions to curb the spread of the virus.

The first peak point of infections was recorded by Maryland-based university on April 24 with 36,400 cases.

The US is the worst-hit country by the pandemic with more than 2.4 million cases and over 124,500 fatalities. In all, more than 663,500 recoveries have been recorded.

President Donald Trump blames increased testing capacity for the surge in the virus cases. More than 29.2 million tests have been conducted so far.

In separate, the nation's health protection agency Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) said Thursday that the US may have 10 times the number of COVID-19 infections as current data indicates.

"Our best estimate right now is that for every case that was recorded there actually were ten other infections," Director Robert Redfield told reporters on a conference call.

Data by Johns Hopkins indicates 2.4 million people have tested positive in the US, and if Redfield's estimate is accurate that would put the total number of people who have contracted the coronavirus at 24 million.