Reported U.S. Daily Infections Rise

   By WSJ Staff 
 

Newly reported Covid-19 cases in the U.S. rose from a day earlier, as the federal government reached a deal with Pfizer Inc. to secure 100 million more doses of the company's coronavirus vaccine.

Under the terms of the deal, Pfizer will provide an additional 70 million doses by the end of June, with 30 million to follow by the end of July, the company and German partner BioNTech SE said. They will receive $1.95 billion for the additional doses.

The U.S. reported more than 228,000 new cases of infection for Wednesday, up from more than 195,000 a day earlier, according to data compiled by Johns Hopkins University.

On Friday, the U.S. recorded nearly 250,000 cases of infection, a daily record.

Since the beginning of the pandemic, the U.S. has reported more than 18.4 million cases of the coronavirus.

Deaths for Wednesday in the U.S. fell slightly, to 3,359 from 3,410 a day earlier, according to Johns Hopkins. On Dec. 16, the U.S. had more than 3,600 fatalities related to Covid-19, Johns Hopkins data showed.

The U.S. has reported more than 326,000 deaths from Covid-19 since the onset of the pandemic.

According to the Covid Tracking Project's report for Wednesday, there are more than 119,000 people in the U.S. who are hospitalized for Covid-19. That included more than 22,000 people who were being treated in intensive care units across the country.

On the vaccination front, more than one million shots against the coronavirus have been administered in the U.S., a small but significant milestone in the long effort to immunize the nation's population, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

In addition, President Trump's last-minute demand to increase the size of direct payments to Americans threw the status of the coronavirus relief package into limbo, just days before many crucial support programs expire.

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

December 24, 2020 04:08 ET (09:08 GMT)

Copyright (c) 2020 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.