WASHINGTON, Jan. 7 (Xinhua) -- The United States witnessed another grim milestone on Wednesday amid the chaos at the Capitol, with the country's daily COVID-19 cases, deaths as well as total hospitalizations all set new world records over the course of the pandemic.

A total of 299,904 new cases and 3,844 deaths were reported across the nation on Wednesday, according to data updated Thursday by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

Both figures are the highest daily counts since the onset of the pandemic in the country.

This brought the 7-day average daily increase of cases to a record-high of over 228,000.

The country reported COVID-19 hospitalizations at over 132,400 cases as of Wednesday, which also set a new record, according to The COVID Tracking Project.

Hospitalizations in the South and West are now worse than the Midwest's peak, with four states in the South seeing record COVID-19 hospitalizations this week, according to the project.

Meanwhile, a total of 52 cases of a coronavirus variant first identified in Britain have been confirmed in the United States, according to the CDC.

CDC's national ensemble now predicts that a total of 405,000 to 438,000 COVID-19 deaths will be reported by Jan. 30.

Public health experts have predicted another potential catastrophic COVID-19 surge after the new year's break as lots of Americans were heading home or traveling for holidays.

The United States has recorded over 21.4 million cases with over 364,000 related deaths as of Thursday afternoon, according to the real-time count kept by Johns Hopkins University.