The United States on Wednesday suffered the highest number of coronavirus deaths since mid-May, making it the deadliest day this summer.
There were 1,503 deaths, according to the Covid Tracking Project.
COVID-19 deaths are lower than their peak in April, when they reached as high as 2,000 per day in the U.S.
But after falling for weeks in the late spring, deaths began increasing in early July amid worsening outbreaks in the South and West.
The persistent death toll in the United States stands in stark contrast to other countries that have more successfully suppressed their outbreaks.
The European Union, whose population exceeds that of the U.S. by more than 100 million, had just 115 deaths on Wednesday, according to statistics compiled by Our World in Data.
There have been more than 166,000 deaths in the United States from the coronavirus since the pandemic began, the most of any country in the world, according to data from Johns Hopkins University.
Deaths are a lagging indicator, meaning it takes time for a patient to develop symptoms and get hospitalized before they die. Some hard-hit states have turned the corner on cases but are still seeing high rates of COVID-19 deaths.
Florida, for example, had a record 277 deaths on Tuesday, but has seen new cases start to decline, according to the Covid Tracking Project.
Former Food and Drug Administration Commissioner Scott Gottlieb said Sunday on CBS’s “Face the Nation” that the country could have up to 300,000 deaths by the end of the year.
“We’re definitely going to be somewhere between 200,000 and 300,000, and whether we’re closer to 200,000 or closer to 300,000 depends on what we do and how this evolves,” he said.