A healthcare worker helps people check in for COVID-19 test at a testing site in Washington, D.C., the United States, Dec. 9, 2020. (Photo by Ting Shen/Xinhua)

U.S. COVID-19 deaths added 3,124 on Wednesday, the largest single-day death toll the country has ever seen since the pandemic began. It was also the first time that the U.S. daily deaths had crossed the threshold of 3,000.

NEW YORK, Dec. 10 -- U.S. COVID-19 deaths surpassed 290,000 on Thursday, according to the Center for Systems Science and Engineering (CSSE) at Johns Hopkins University.

With the national case count topping 15.4 million, the death toll across the United States rose to 290,219 as of 12:26 p.m. local time (1726 GMT), according to the CSSE data.

New York state reported 35,183 fatalities, at the top of the U.S. state-level death toll list. Texas recorded the second most deaths, standing at 23,657. The states of California, Florida and New Jersey all confirmed more than 17,000 deaths, the CSSE tally showed.

States with more than 10,000 fatalities also include Illinois, Pennsylvania, Massachusetts and Michigan.

The United States remains the nation hit the worst by the pandemic, with the world's highest caseload and death toll, accounting for more than 18 percent of the global deaths.

U.S. COVID-19 deaths added 3,124 on Wednesday, the largest single-day death toll the country has ever seen since the pandemic began. It was also the first time that the U.S. daily deaths had crossed the threshold of 3,000, according to data compiled by Johns Hopkins University.