NEW YORK, Aug. 11 (Xinhua) -- The total number of COVID-19 cases in the United States topped 5.1 million on Tuesday, according to the Center for Systems Science and Engineering (CSSE) at Johns Hopkins University.
The case count rose to 5,141,013, with the national death toll reaching 164,536 as of 11:05 p.m. local time (0305 GMT), said the CSSE.
A total of eight U.S. states have so far reported over 180,000 cases, including California, Florida, Texas, New York, Georgia, Illinois, Arizona, and New Jersey, the CSSE's latest tally showed.
Among the hardest-hit states, Texas on Tuesday witnessed its confirmed cases surpassing 500,000, with 8,913 new cases registered in the last 24 hours.
By far, the United States remains the worst-hit country in the world, in terms of both the caseload and death toll.
Unfortunately, soaring daily infections and deaths are not the only figures painting a grim picture of the lingering COVID-19 crisis in the United States.
The disease has so far killed more people in the United States in the past few months than the total death toll of around 103,000 U.S. service members in 27 wars and conflicts overseas over the past 70 years.
According to a graph published in Newsweek on April 9, COVID-19 has become the No. 1 cause of death in the country, killing more people per day than cancer or heart disease.
An NBC News tally last week showed that one person died every 80 seconds from the disease in the country, and that the pace of death is still accelerating.
Of every 66 residents in the United States, one will be infected with COVID-19, said a Reuters analysis published on Sunday.
According to a joint report published Monday by the American Academy of Pediatrics and the Children's Hospital Association, the rate of confirmed COVID-19 cases among children in the country increased by 40 percent in the last two weeks of July, with nearly 100,000 new infections registered.
Besides, the United States is struggling with racial disparities in COVID-19 infections and deaths.
As of June 12, non-Hispanic black persons had a rate of infection of or death from the coronavirus approximately five times that of non-Hispanic white persons, while Hispanic or Latino persons had a rate approximately four times that of non-Hispanic white persons, said the U.S. Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in a statement on June 25.
Data from the CDC updated on Tuesday also showed that 55 percent of all cases available by race or ethnicity nationwide are Hispanic or Latino persons, black persons and Asians, while 39.2 percent are white persons.
Last week, a study published in the journal Pediatrics noted the COVID-19 incidence rates in U.S. black and Hispanic children are 30 percent and 46 percent respectively, much higher than the rate in white children, which is only 7 percent.
Amid the never-before-seen public health crisis, more and more Americans are dissatisfied with the U.S. administration's epidemic response.
An ABC News/Ipsos poll on July 29-30 found that only 34 percent of Americans approve of Washington's handling of the COVID-19 pandemic. Enditem
