California becomes first U.S. state to report 50,000 new COVID cases in 1 day

As California’s coronavirus outbreak continues to chart a sharp upward trajectory, the latest diagnosis statistics, released Wednesday, broke state and national records.

Health officials confirmed 53,711 new COVID-19 infections over the past 24 hours, bringing California’s total case count to 1.67 million since the pandemic began.

The enormous leap in cases exceeded the state’s previous daily record, established last week, by roughly 17,000 cases. It also surpassed single-day infection records set by all other U.S. states throughout the duration of the COVID-19 outbreak.

Virus cases began to spike in California several weeks ago, alongside a number of additional states that reported similar patterns. The state set its previous record of 35, 729 new cases on December 11 after weeks of increasing case numbers.

The state has confirmed over 200,000 new infections since last Wednesday.

This is a developing story and will be updated as more information becomes available.