More than one million COVID-19 cases have been logged in U.S. in the first five days of December, according to data from Johns Hopkins University. The staggering rate of infection brings the total number of cases in the U.S. to more than 14.5 million and the number of COVID-related deaths to 281,199 as of Saturday, as hospitals struggle to keep up with the overload of patients. The latest figures do not yet reflect transmissions over the Thanksgiving holiday when millions of Americans ignored warnings and traveled. By contrast, it took nearly 100 days after the first COVID-19 case was confirmed on January 20, 2020 to reach the first one million cases.