The United States lost more than 23,000 lives to Covid-19 during the week ended Jan. 17, setting a record for the third week in a row, though the number of new infections and the amount of patients in hospitals both fell from the previous seven days.

U.S. coronavirus cases crossed the 15 million mark on Dec. 8 as regulators moved a step closer to approving a Covid-19 vaccine and Britain started inoculating people, offering hope of slowing a pandemic that killed 15,000 Americans in the previous week.

Florida and four other states recorded daily highs for cases of COVID-19 on Saturday, highlighting the worsening spread of the coronavirus in parts of the U.S. South and West, prompting some officials to roll back their reopening plans.

University of Washington researchers estimated that 145,728 people could die of COVID-19 in the United States by August 2020.

The U.S. Supreme Court turned away a novel case by Arizona seeking to recover billions of dollars that the state has said that members of the Sackler family – owners of Purdue Pharma LP – funneled out of the OxyContin maker before the company filed for bankruptcy in September 2019.