It was an unhappy Thanksgiving in the battle against the pandemic. U.S. Covid-19 hospitalizations topped 90,000 for the first time Thursday, marking the 33rd consecutive day the country has set a record in that metric.

Data from The Atlantic‘s Covid Tracking Project shows that 90,481 people were hospitalized with the disease, up by 522 from Wednesday. And Johns Hopkins University reported today that another 1,232 Americans died of Covid-19 on the holiday, raising the U.S. death toll to 263,454. It also reported 110,611 new cases on Thursday, for a U.S. total of 12.88 million. The daily death and cases counts are lower from the previous because of a holiday lag in testing results.

Meanwhile, California remains a national hotspot for coronavirus, with its 10,862 new daily cases Thursday trailing only Illinois’ 12,022 ((see the chart above).

At the current rates, roughly 120 Americans are being infected every minute and about 70 are dying every hour. And the outlook for the near future doesn’t appear to be rosy.

“If the surge takes a turn of continuing to go up and you have the sustained greater than 100,000 infections a day and 1,300 deaths per day and the count keeps going up and up … I don’t see it being any different during the Christmas and New Year’s holidays than during Thanksgiving,” Dr. Anthony Fauci said.

Johns Hopkins also reported today that global Covid-19 cases have topped 61.3 million and deaths are at nearly 1.44 million.

The coronavirus vaccine developed by Oxford university and AstraZeneca has delivered a better than expected result in late-stage trials, boosting hopes that the pandemic can be defeated.

Nearly 1.05m travellers passed through US airport checkpoints on Sunday, the most since mid-March, as people travelled ahead of the Thanksgiving holiday despite a warning from the top US health body. UK prime minister Boris Johnson has announced that England will enter into a strict three-tier system from December 2. Under the new restrictions, gyms, hairdressers and the wider leisure sector will be allowed to reopen within all tiers, alongside gyms and non-essential shops.

Qantas plans to insist that passengers on international flights have been vaccinated against Covid-19 before boarding its planes, once any vaccination has been launched. The biggest US technology groups, including Apple and Alphabet, hold 27 per cent of a total record cash pile among non-financial companies as the coronavirus pandemic has prompted businesses to hoard their money.

The ailing UK sports industry was given a boost on Monday after the British government announced that fans would be allowed to make a limited return to stadiums at big sporting events in England after the end of national lockdown restrictions next month. Ohio reported nearly 12,000 new coronavirus cases on Monday, its biggest one-day jump of the pandemic. Washington DC and Pennsylvania on Monday joined a growing list of US jurisdictions tightening coronavirus restrictions ahead of this week’s Thanksgiving public holiday. Many Iranians have defied the lockdown which started on Saturday in order to make ends meet, casting doubts on the effectiveness of the initiative in bringing down the number of Covid-19 deaths.