The United States on Wednesday registered 3,071 deaths from COVID-19 within 24 hours, the highest daily death toll since April, showed data compiled by Johns Hopkins University.

As of 8:30 p.m. (0030 GMT Thursday), the country had recorded a total of 289,188 COVID-19 deaths.

On Tuesday, a panel meeting of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) decided that health care personnel and residents of long-term care facilities will be the first groups to receive COVID-19 vaccines in the U.S.

More than 240,000 health care workers have been infected with COVID-19 and 858 have died, according to the CDC. So far, 15,379,574 cases have been reported nationwide, making the United States the hardest hit by the pandemic across the world, followed by India and Brazil.