The U.S. was hit with more than 75,600 new cases of COVID-19 on Thursday, breaking its record of daily new cases for the 11th time in July.
The New York Times’ COVID-19 database shows that 75,671 people were found to be infected with the coronavirus on Thursday, surpassing previous single-day record of 68,241 new cases last Friday.
There are now more than 3,588,400 cases and 138,200 deaths from the virus in the country.
The rate of infection has skyrocketed nationwide over the past several weeks, particularly in Florida and Arizona.
As the U.S. continually breaks record after record in the pandemic, President Donald Trump has been attempting to brush off the crisis by falsely claiming that the figures are being skewed by increased testing and that the virus is actually disappearing.
Amid Trump’s efforts to whitewash the pandemic, his administration took the eyebrow-raising step this week of ordering states to start sending their data on COVID-19 directly to the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) instead of the Centers of Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), drawing concerns that the administration may begin concealing alarming data on the pandemic instead of allowing the CDC to report it publicly.
Sure enough, CNBC found on Thursday that the data had been wiped from the CDC’s website.
