The death toll from the novel coronavirus in New York state has surpassed 20,000.
The northeastern U.S. state reported 952 new deaths from COVID-19 over the past 24 hours. Health officials initially recorded just 232 new deaths during Wednesday but then added 720 more to the database overnight after being reclassified as attributable to COVID-19.
The grim milestone comes just three weeks after New York state marked 10,000 deaths.
There are now 323,978 people across the state who have tested positive for the novel coronavirus and at least 20,597 have died, according to health officials. A vast majority of those deaths — over 14,000 — occurred in New York City.
