Global record broken in daily Covid case tally

Nearly 3.4 million new Covid-19 infections were recorded on Wednesday, the highest such daily tally since the pandemic began. The recent wave of infections has been driven by the Omicron variant.

On Wednesday, the World Health Organization (WHO) Covid-19 dashboard showed that 3.39 million Covid-19 cases had been reported around the world in the preceding 24 hours. 

The global health body receives its data from governments and collates them to provide regional and worldwide figures.

Wednesday’s data is far in excess of the previous record and, for the first time, the number of registered cases has gone over three million in one day. 

The recent wave of infection is driven by the Omicron variant of Covid-19 which is particularly prevalent in western Europe and the US. The speed at which the variant has spread has left hospitals overwhelmed.

The variant is now considered the second most contagious disease on the planet. Only measles is more infectious.