US adds 57,000 virus cases in 24 hours: Johns Hopkins

The United States on Monday recorded 57,039 new coronavirus cases in 24 hours

WASHINGTON (AFP) - The United States on Monday recorded 57,039 new coronavirus cases in 24 hours, Johns Hopkins University reported in its real-time tally.

The US is the hardest-hit country in terms of both death toll and total caseload, which stood at 4,286,663 as of 8:30 pm (0030 GMT Tuesday), according to the Baltimore-based university.

An additional 679 deaths brought the overall death toll to 147,588.

After a drop in infection rate in the late spring, the US has seen a recent surge in COVID-19 cases, particularly in southern and western states such as California, Texas, Alabama and Florida.

Until Sunday, the number of daily infections had exceeded 60,000 for 12 straight days, with some days notching more than 70,000 new cases.

Last weekend, the number of deaths reported in 24 hours had exceeded more than 1,000 for four days in a row. The last time daily tolls were so high was in May.

The slight dip on Sunday and Monday could be due to local health authorities  slower response over the weekend.

- Trump national security advisor tests positive for COVID-19 -

Donald Trump s national security advisor tested positive for COVID-19 Monday, as the president prepared to visit a North Carolina facility where one of the leading vaccine candidates is being manufactured.

Trump has placed his hopes in the emergence of a successful vaccine by this fall to both contain the country s still raging coronavirus outbreak and revive his faltering election hopes.

National security advisor Robert O Brien is the latest and most senior White House aide to contract the virus.

He "has been self-isolating and working from a secure location off site," the White House said in a statement, adding that there was "no risk of exposure to the president or the vice president."

Others who have been previously infected include Vice President Mike Pence s spokeswoman Katie Miller, and Kimberly Guilfoyle, a top fundraiser for the Trump campaign and girlfriend of Donald Trump Jr.

The United States is by far the worst-hit country in the world, with more than 4.2 million confirmed cases and nearly 150,000 deaths.

Though the number of new cases has leveled off for the past few days, the US has so far failed to push its curve down, as other nations have done through lockdowns and physical distancing.

Trump s chief of staff Mark Meadows articulated the White House s strategy to ABC News on Sunday, telling the channel that masks weren t the answer.

"It s not masks. It s not shutting down the economy. Hopefully, it is American ingenuity that will allow for therapies and vaccines to ultimately conquer this," he said.

Trump will visit Fujifilm Diosynth Biotechnologies in Morrisville, North Carolina on Monday afternoon, which has just been awarded a contract to manufacture Novavax s experimental vaccine.

The US has spent more than $6.3 billion since July to fund vaccine development efforts under Operation Warp Speed.

Leading contenders include established pharmaceuticals like Johnson & Johnson, Pfizer and AstraZeneca, as well as upstarts like Novavax and Moderna.

The government is buying up stocks of their vaccines even before they are proven to work or be effective, in order to remove financial risk for the firms involved and speed up their delivery.

Operation Warp Speed aims to deliver 300 million doses of a vaccine by January 2021 -- and Trump has made no secret of the fact that his goal is to immunize America first.

This is far from the rhetoric coming from European officials, who have called for a vaccine to be a "global public good."

Last week, the US signed a $1.95 billion deal with US pharma giant Pfizer and Germany s BioNTech for 100 million doses of their vaccine, the biggest deal to date.

"Hopefully the approval process will go very quickly, and we think we have a winner there," Trump said.

"We also think we have other companies right behind that are doing very well on the vaccines, long ahead of schedule."

- Results by November? -

Moderna, one of vaccine makers that is furthest ahead in its development timeline, began the final stage of its clinical trial Monday in collaboration with the National Institutes of Health.

The trial will be conducted across the United States and is expected to enroll approximately 30,000 adult volunteers who do not have COVID-19.

Participants will get two doses of the vaccine given 28 days apart.

A notable irony of the process is that, given the rampant nature of the US epidemic, results could come far sooner than the two years the trial is set to run.

Daily new cases have plateaued around the 66,000 mark for the past few days.

"It s a really optimistic scenario. It could be November," CEO Stephane Bancel told CNBC on Monday.

"Again, at this stage, it s impossible for us to know precisely. It will depend on the event rate, the attack rate of infection."