US tightens rules as cases soar

US officials on Wednesday announced tough measures including quarantines and stay-at-home orders as daily coronavirus cases approached record levels after surging across the nation's South and West.

Nearly four months after reporting its first death from COVID-19, the United States faces a deepening health crisis as a wave of infections hits young people and experts issue new warnings.

More than 35,900 cases were recorded in the past 24 hours, according to a tally by Johns Hopkins University, with heavily populated states including Florida, Texas and California all reporting a record number of cases.

The latest figures take the number of cases in the country to nearly 2.4 million, the tracker from the Baltimore-based university showed at 8:30 pm local time on Wednesday, after several days in which the number of cases has surged.

The world's largest economy is already the country hardest hit by the pandemic, with a mounting death toll of almost 122,000.

Some officials－including the Texas governor－who loosened restrictions on business, dining, public gatherings and tourism, are now urging residents to again stay home.

Three northeastern states that made progress in beating back the pandemic－New York, New Jersey and Connecticut－urged visitors arriving from US hot spots to quarantine themselves.

Several states in the South and West including Florida and Texas are suffering what White House adviser and top scientist Anthony Fauci described as "disturbing" new surges in infections.

Fauci warned the next two weeks would be "critical" to addressing the surges.

Meanwhile in India, authorities are launching a massive survey taking down health details from New Delhi's entire population of 29 million, and testing everyone with symptoms by July 6.

The new plan was announced on Wednesday after the sprawling capital became the worst-hit city by the pandemic in India with 70,390 cases, exceeding Mumbai.

Nearly half of the cases in Delhi were part of viral clusters, and the search for them through "vigorous contact tracing of COVID-19 positive patients will be undertaken to analyze the reasons for clustering", the city government said.