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The U.S. breaks its single-day virus case record for the second day in a row
美国连续第二天打破其单日病毒病例纪录
With more than 580,000 cases, the United States shattered its own record for new daily coronavirus cases — beating a milestone it already broke just the day before. Thursday’s count, according to The New York Times’s database, toppled the 488,000 new cases on Wednesday, which was nearly double the highest numbers from last winter. The back-to-back record-breaking days are a growing sign of the virus’s fast spread and come as the world enters its third year of the pandemic.
美国确诊病例超过58万例，打破了自己单日新增冠状病毒病例的记录，超过了前一天已经打破的里程碑。根据《纽约时报》的数据库，周四的统计数字推翻了周三的48.8万个新病例，这几乎是去年冬天最高数字的两倍。连续几天打破纪录是病毒快速传播的越来越多的迹象，而且正值全球进入大流行的第三个年头。
Hospitalizations and deaths, however, have not followed the same dramatic increase, further indication that the Omicron variant seems to be milder than Delta and causes fewer cases of severe illness. In the past two weeks, deaths are down by five percent, with a daily average of 1,221, while hospitalizations increased by just 15 percent to an average of 78,781 per day.
然而，住院人数和死亡人数并没有出现同样的大幅增长，这进一步表明，Omicron变体似乎比Delta变体更温和，导致严重疾病的病例更少。在过去的两周里，死亡人数下降了5%，平均每天有1221人，而住院人数仅增加了15%，平均每天有78781人。
Across the country, airlines canceled thousands of flights, leaving would-be travelers stranded, while others waited in line for hours to get their hands on a coronavirus test. The high numbers are even more striking considering that experts associate the holiday season with major disturbances in testing and data reporting. The rise of at-home tests could also mean some cases aren’t making into the official count. Last year, the so-called holiday curve showed a major decline in cases after Thanksgiving and Christmas, which underreported the spike in cases that actually took place.
在全国范围内，航空公司取消了数千个航班，导致潜在旅客滞留，而其他人则排了几个小时的队，以获得冠状病毒检测。考虑到专家们将假日季节与测试和数据报告中的重大干扰联系在一起，这一数字就更加惊人了。家庭检测的增多也可能意味着一些病例没有被纳入官方统计。去年，所谓的假日曲线显示，在感恩节和圣诞节后，病例数量大幅下降，这低估了实际病例数量的激增。
