THE total number of COVID-19 cases in the United States topped 70 million on Friday, taking only 12 days to rise from the 60 million mark, according to data from Johns Hopkins University.

The U.S. COVID-19 case count rose to 70,070,539, with a total of 864,304 deaths, as of 18:21 Eastern Standard Time (EST) Friday, showed the data.

More than one fifth of the U.S. population now has been infected with the virus.

A total of 530,130,196 doses of vaccines have been administered in the country, according to the CSSE tally.

Since December 13 last year, when the cumulative number of confirmed cases in the United States exceeded 50 million, 20 million new cases have been reported in the country in less than one and a half months, and the time for every 10 million new cases has also significantly shortened from less than a month to less than half a month.

The rapid spread of the Omicron variant in the United States has led to a surge in hospital admissions across the country. Hospitals in Kentucky, Georgia and Connecticut are overwhelmed and short of medical resources, as well as losing health workers due to the infections.

To deal with the difficulty in testing COVID-19 in the country, the U.S. federal government has pledged to distribute nucleic acid reagent test kits to the public free of charge and has ordered a total of one billion of them.

But a number of Republican governors said in recent days that federal orders crowded out state orders, leaving states unable to get the kits they ordered.