Live coronavirus updates: US reports more than 4,000 deaths on the deadliest day of the pandemic

As the United States noted another grim milestone with more than 4,000 covid-19 deaths reported in one day, federal disease surveillance said research showed that asymptomatic people transmitted more than half of all cases of the new coronavirus.

“These findings are now bold, italic, and underlined,”

; said Jay K. Butler, CDC’s deputy director of infectious diseases and co-author of the study, published in the journal JAMA Network Open.

As disease experts have predicted for months, the coronavirus is spreading rapidly and fiercely in the new year, with a one-day death toll on Thursday highlighting the threat. In the last seven days, infections, hospitalizations and deaths in the United States have reached record highs. Cases reached a record 277,135 on Saturday. And by Thursday, more than 132,000 people had been hospitalized in the country with covid-19, the disease caused by the virus.