The number of Covid-19 hospitalisations in the United States hit an all-time high

New peak beats previous high from April’s first wave of pandemic

Coronavirus hospitalisations in the US hit an all-time high of 61,964 as the pandemic continued to surge across the country.

And the number of daily cases of the virus across the country also set a new high of 131,000, the highest single-day number since the public health emergency began.

The number of people being treated for the virus in hospitals has now more than doubled since September, according to the Covid Tracking Project.

The shocking number for Tuesday now exceeds the previous peak of 59,940 reached in the initial wave of the virus on 15 April, and the second peak on 23 July of 59,718.

The US became the first country to exceed 10 million cases on Sunday and now averages a record of 111,000 new cases a day, according to the New York Times.

More than 245,000 Americans have now died from the virus.

The surging case numbers comes as drug company Pfizer announced  this week that early data shows its vaccine is 90 per cent effective.

Virus expert Dr Anthony Fauci welcomed the news and called the results “extraordinary.”

“The results are really quite good, I mean extraordinary,” said Dr Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, according to the Washington Post.

Pfizer says it will get further data on the safety of the vaccine later this month but the company said it had seen no major safety issues so far with it.

Dr Fauci also said that he trusted Pfizer’s work and would take the vaccine himself if it was approved by the Food and Drug Administration.

“Well, I'm going to look at the data, but I trust Pfizer, I trust the FDA,” Dr Fauci told MSNBC’s Andrea Mitchell.

“These are colleagues of mine for decades, the career scientists.

"If they look at this data and they say 'this data is solid, let's go ahead and approve it,' I promise you, Andrea, I will take the vaccine and I will recommend that my family take the vaccine.”