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NEW YORK, Jan. 2 (Xinhua) -- U.S. COVID-19 deaths surpassed 350,000 on Saturday evening, according to the Center for Systems Science and Engineering (CSSE) at Johns Hopkins University.
With the national case count topping 20.4 million, the death toll across the United States rose to 350,186 as of 11:22 p.m. local time (0422 GMT Sunday), according to the CSSE data.

New York State reported 38,273 fatalities, at the top of the U.S. state-level death toll list. Texas recorded the second most deaths of 28,338, followed by California with 26,542 deaths and Florida with 21,890 deaths, the CSSE tally showed.
States with more than 10,000 fatalities also include New Jersey, Illinois, Pennsylvania, Michigan, Massachusetts and Georgia.
The United States remains the nation worst hit by the pandemic, with the world's highest caseload and death toll, accounting for more than 24 percent of the global cases and over 19 percent of the global deaths.
U.S. COVID-19 deaths increased by over 50,000 in 19 days after it hit 300,000 on Dec. 14, 2020.

An updated model forecast by the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation at the University of Washington projected a total of 567,195 COVID-19 deaths in the United States by April 1, 2021, based on the current projection scenario.