While the election dominates headlines, daily COVID cases in the US surpassed 100,000.

While the election dominates the headlines, the number of new daily coronavirus cases recorded in the US surpassed 100,000 for the time yesterday, according to a tally by Johns Hopkins University, who reported November 4th, 102,831 new infections, up from 91,530 cases on Election Day. The data also showed that 1,097 deaths were captured Wednesday, only slightly lower than the 1,134 deaths reported the previous day. In total, 233,734 Americans have died from the coronavirus.

Amid the cases, soaring number of hospitalizations due to the virus have been recorded in many states, with the surge most pronounced in the Midwest and Southwest. Missouri, Alaska, Ohio, Iowa, Indiana, Minnesota, Nebraska, North Dakota and New Mexico were among the states that hit record highs in terms of a seven-day average number of current hospitalizations, according to data from the Covid Tracking Project. Officials in two states, Iowa and Missouri, have warned that hospital bed capacity could soon be overwhelmed.

Waiting for the vaccine

It appears that there will be no let-up in cases until a vaccine becomes widely available. British pharmaceutical giant AstraZeneca said November 5th it expects vaccine data to be available within the next eight weeks as it reported a solid rise in third-quarter sales.

“Results from late-stage trials are anticipated later this year, depending on the rate of infection within the communities where the clinical trials are being conducted. Data readouts will be submitted to regulators and published in peer-reviewed scientific journals,” AstraZeneca said as it released its earnings results.

The company said global product sales rose 7% to $6.52 billion for the three months ended Sept. 30 on a constant-currency basis. High hopes have been placed on AstraZeneca this year as it has tried to develop a vaccine in collaboration with the University of Oxford. The vaccine candidate, known as AZD1222, is in late-stage clinical trials in the UK, Brazil, South Africa, and the US, involving about 23,000 participants.

Trials recently had to be paused due to unexplained illnesses experienced by two participants, but regulators allowed the tests to resume after it was determined that the medical problems were not connected to the vaccine.

The drugmaker early last week released an update on the vaccine’s progress, saying it had produced a similar immune response in older and younger adults. The news spurred hopes that a vaccine could be available by the end of the year, although the drugmaker has already missed a previous target to deliver 30 million doses to the UK by September.

In June, several countries in Europe signed a deal with AstraZeneca for up to 400 million doses of the vaccine with the first batch expected by the end of the year.

During the first week of November, the head of the UK’s vaccine taskforce admitted that the target of 30 million doses by September had not been achieved, estimating instead that Britain would get 4 million doses by the end of the year and 100 million doses “in the first half of next year.”