BREAKING: With Vaccine Drawing Closer, U.S. Tops 15 Million Coronavirus Cases

Photo: Reuters

NEW YORK (Reuters) - U.S. coronavirus cases crossed the 15 million mark on Tuesday 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 last week alone.

Record cases in at least three states - Arizona, Alabama and Ohio - pushed the cumulative case load to over 15 million, according to a Reuters tally of state and county data. With the virus showing no sign of abating, leading health officials are once again sounding the alarm of further spread when people gather for the year-end holidays.

In a bit of welcome news, Pfizer Inc. cleared another hurdle on Tuesday when the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) released documents that raised no new red flags over the safety or efficacy of the vaccine it developed with Germany's BioNTech SE.

While China and Russia have moved forward with their own vaccines, Briton Margaret Keenan, 90, became the first person to receive the Pfizer vaccine outside of clinical trials when she received a shot at her local hospital in Coventry in central England.

The United States badly needs a new tool to fight a virus spinning out of control. Another 203,474 infections were reported on Monday and 1,582 people died.

In Arizona, one of 14 states without a mask mandate, health officials on Tuesday reported over 12,000 new coronavirus cases, eclipsing the previous record of 6,799 on Dec 5.

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