The coronavirus pandemic killed a record 865 people in the United States in the 24 hours until Tuesday evening, according to a tally compiled by Johns Hopkins University.
The US death toll rose from 3,008 at 8:30pm EST on Monday to 3,873 at 8.30pm EST on Tuesday.
The United States now has 188,172 confirmed cases, by far the highest of any country, ahead of Italy, Spain and China.
President Donald Trump on Tuesday warned of a "very painful" two weeks as the United States wrestles with a coronavirus surge that the White House warns could kill as many as 240,000 Americans.
"This is going to be a very painful, a very, very painful two weeks," Trump told a press conference at the White House.
Trump described the pandemic as "a plague."
"I want every American to be prepared for the hard days that lie ahead," he said.
Top health experts said that the decision to maintain strict social distancing was the only way to stop the easily transmitted virus, even if this has caused massive disruption to the economy with three quarters of Americans under some form of lockdown.
"There's no magic vaccine or therapy. It's just behaviors, each of our behaviors translating into something that changes the course of this viral pandemic over the next 30 days," Deborah Birx, coronavirus response coordinator at the White House, said.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)
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