A man strolls at a park in New York, the United States, Nov. 14, 2020. The United States has reported more than 10.8 million COVID-19 cases in total with the death toll from the disease exceeding 245,000 as of Saturday afternoon, showed a tally by Johns Hopkins University. (Xinhua/Wang Ying)

 
The United States on Wednesday registered more than 3,000 deaths from COVID-19 within 24 hours, the highest daily death toll since April, showed data compiled by Johns Hopkins University.

As of 8:30 p.m. (0030 GMT Thursday), the country had recorded a total of 289,188 COVID-19 deaths, up by 3,071 over the past 24 hours.

On Tuesday, a panel meeting of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) decided that health care personnel and residents of long-term care facilities will be the first groups to receive COVID-19 vaccines in the United States.

More than 240,000 health care workers have been infected with COVID-19 and 858 have died, according to the CDC.

So far, 15,379,574 cases have been reported nationwide, making the United States the hardest hit by the pandemic across the world, followed by India and Brazil.