WASHINGTON (Reuters) - An unrelenting U.S. coronavirus surge pushed hospitals further to their limits as the United States pressed on with its immunization rollout on Thursday and prepared to ship nearly 6 million doses of a new vaccine on the cusp of winning regulatory approval.
COVID-19 hospitalizations rose to record heights for a 19th straight day, with nearly 113,000 coronavirus patients in U.S. medical facilities nationwide on Wednesday, while 3,580 more Americans perished, the most yet in a single day.
Another 232,255 U.S. COVID-19 infections were reported on Wednesday, the second-highest daily U.S. case load on record, driving the number of known U.S. infections to more than 17 million since the pandemic began.
The highly contagious virus has claimed almost 308,000 lives in the United States to date, the most in the world.
The staggering toll underscores the stakes involved as U.S. regulators weighed whether to grant emergency use authorization for a vaccine developed by Moderna Inc, a week after an earlier vaccine from Pfizer Inc and German partner BioNTech SE won consent for mass distribution.
The initial 2.9 million doses of the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine began shipping on Sunday and were still making their way to hospitals across the country and into the arms of doctors, nurses, and other frontline medical professionals.
Some of the first shots were also going to residents and staff of long-term care facilities. Later vaccine rounds will go to other essential workers, senior citizens and people with chronic health conditions.
It will take several months before vaccines are widely available to the public on demand, and opinion polls have found many Americans hesitant about getting inoculated.
Some are distrustful of immunizations in general, and some are wary of the unprecedented speed with which the first vaccines were developed and rolled out - 11 months from the first documented U.S. cases of COVID-19.
Public health authorities have sought to reassure Americans that the COVID-19 vaccines are safe as well as highly effective at preventing illness.