The United States on Tuesday logged its highest single-day COVID-19 case count with 441,278 infections. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reported that 58.6% of these were omicron cases. 

Also read: California 1st state to top 5 million COVID cases amid omicron surge

US surpassed its previous single-day record by close to 150,000 cases. The spike in the infections come as the omicron strain is gripping the country amid the holiday season. As per Ben Leonard of the Politico, Christmas holiday shuttered testing sites and may have contributed to testing backlogs.

A CDC spokesperson said that the daily case total is likely an overestimate due to lagging state reporting.

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“The counts of cases will become more stable after the new year,” CDC spokesperson Jasmine Reed told POLITICO.

The omicron variant was estimated to be 58.6% of the coronavirus variants in the US. The CDC revised the proportion of cases for the week ending December 18  to 22% from 73%. 

The Delta variant accounts for 41.1% of all coronavirus cases, according to the public health agency’s data on Tuesday.

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The previous single-day record  of 294,015 was set last winter. On December 20, the US logged more than 291,000 new cases. The country averaged 240,408 new cases per day over the past week, which is more than double the rate in early December. 

Meanwhile, California became the first state to record more than 5 million known coronavirus infections, according to the state dashboard Tuesday, which was delayed by the holiday weekend.