|  | | | | | | | | | What you need to know about the coronavirus today | | | | | | Americans urged to stay home over holiday
U.S. health officials and politicians pleaded with Americans on Tuesday to stay at home over the Thanksgiving holiday as record coronavirus caseloads pushed hospitals to their limits.
The chorus of public appeals intensified heading into a holiday weekend that is expected to further fuel an alarming surge of infections nationwide, while the daily U.S. death toll climbed above 2,000 - at least four deaths every three minutes. It marked the highest 24-hour loss of life from the pandemic since early May.
“We are on fire with COVID,” Kentucky Governor Andy Beshear said on CNN, defending unpopular restrictions he ordered last week that included new limits on retail activity and school closures. “We’re just trying to do the right thing.”
Death toll spikes across Europe
Poland reported on Wednesday a new daily record of 674 coronavirus-related deaths, while Russia reported a record 507 deaths in the last 24 hours, taking its national death toll to 37,538 since the pandemic began.
Germany reported a record 410 deaths in the last 24 hours, before the 16 federal state leaders and Chancellor Angela Merkel were due to meet on Wednesday to discuss restrictions for the Christmas and New Year holidays.
More than 59.8 million people have been reported to be infected globally and 1,409,664 have died, according to a Reuters tally.
Singapore nearly virus-free
Having once had the highest COVID-19 rate in Southeast Asia, Singapore has all but eradicated the virus after reporting 14 days without any new local cases, and saying it had snuffed out the last cluster of infection at a worker dormitory.
The cramped dormitories for young, low-wage laborer's, mainly from Bangladesh, India and China had been at the center of the city-state’s spiraling cases earlier this year.
While Singapore has reported zero local cases for two weeks, there has been a trickle of infected people arriving from abroad who have been immediately isolated, authorities say.
Mutations not making virus able to spread more rapidly
The coronavirus is mutating as it spreads around the world in the pandemic, but none of the mutations currently documented appears to be making it able to spread more rapidly, scientists said.
In a study using a global dataset of virus genomes from 46,723 people with COVID-19 from 99 countries, researchers identified more than 12,700 mutations, or changes, in the SARS-CoV-2 virus.
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