WASHINGTON, United States (AFP) — The coronavirus pandemic killed 819 people in the United States in the past 24 hours, according to figures released today by Johns Hopkins University.

There have been a total of 111,751 deaths in the country and 1,973,803 cases of infection, the Baltimore-based institution’s real-time tracker reported at 8:30 pm (0030 GMT Wednesday).

The United States is the country hardest hit by the pandemic in terms of both the number of fatalities and number of cases.

For the past two weeks, the daily number of fatalities has dipped below 1,000 multiple times, after reaching a high of more than 3,000 dead in 24 hours in mid-April.

But the increase in the number of cases has stubbornly remained at about 20,000 a day, with the country on a seemingly unending plateau.

While the East Coast states of New York, New Jersey and Massachusetts accounted for about 50 per cent of all cases until approximately a month ago, the geographic footprint of the US epidemic has now shifted to the country’s Midwest, south and west.

According to researchers at the University of Massachusetts, which takes an average forecast from 11 different models, the coronavirus death toll will be around 130,000 by July 4.