People line up outside a food pantry in Brooklyn, New York, United States, Nov. 12, 2020. (Photo by Michael Nagle/Xinhua)

 
US COVID-19 deaths surpassed 310,000 on Thursday, according to the Center for Systems Science and Engineering (CSSE) at Johns Hopkins University.

With the national case count topping 17.1 million, the death toll across the United States amounted to 310,095 as of 5:26 p.m. local time (2226 GMT), according to the CSSE data.

New York State registered 36,052 fatalities, at the top of the U.S. state-level death toll list. Texas recorded the second most deaths, which stood at 24,932. The states of California, Florida and New Jersey all confirmed more than 18,000 deaths, the CSSE tally showed.

States with more than 10,000 fatalities also include Illinois, Pennsylvania, Michigan, Massachusetts and Georgia.

The United States remains the nation hit the worst by the pandemic, with the world's highest caseload and death toll, accounting for more than 18 percent of the global deaths.

U.S. COVID-19 deaths soared above 300,000 on Dec. 14, and added 10,000 in just three days.

On Wednesday, the country reported 3,656 deaths, the highest single-day rise in death toll since the pandemic began, according to data compiled by the university.

Meanwhile, U.S. daily cases surged to 247,403 on Wednesday, the largest number of new cases the country has ever seen in one day, the CSSE chart showed.

In addition, current hospitalizations in the United States hit an all-time high of 113,090 on Wednesday, according to The COVID Tracking Project.

Based on current projection scenario, the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation at the University of Washington projected a total of 502,256 COVID-19 deaths in the United States by April 1, 2021. Enditem