More than 64.43 million people have been reported to be infected by the coronavirus globally and 1,496,238 have died.

The World Health Organisation's regional director for Europe Hans Kluge said on Thursday that the promise of COVID-19 vaccines is "potentially game-changing".

The US recorded more than 3100 COVID-19 deaths in a single day while the number of people in hospital with the virus eclipsed 100,000 for the first time and new cases have begun topping 200,000 a day, according to figures released on Thursday.

Health authorities had warned that the numbers could fluctuate strongly before and after the country's Thanksgiving holiday when, because of reporting delays, figures often drop and then rise sharply a few days later as state and local agencies catch up with the backlog.

Across the US, the coronavirus is blamed for more than 270,000 deaths and about 14 million confirmed infections.

Indonesia set another daily record for coronavirus cases on Thursday with 8369 new infections, prompting the government of the world's fourth most populous country to shorten year-end holidays.

The increase brings Indonesia's confirmed total to 557,877 cases, the most in Southeast Asia and second in Asia only to India's 9.5 million confirmed cases.

The health ministry reported a total of 17,355 deaths from the coronavirus.

The country's previous record was set on Sunday with 6267 new cases.

President Joko Widodo instructed his ministers to cut the 2020 year-end holiday short to curb COVID-19 transmission.

The holidays will be reduced by three days, officials said.

Russia reported another single-day record of new coronavirus cases - 28,145 - amid a surge in recent months, according to a federal monitoring service that provides daily statistics.

The spike on Thursday was an increase of 2800 cases from the previous day.

Russia has recorded the world's fourth largest caseload with a total of more than 2.3 million cases.

More than 41,600 people have died of the disease in the country, according to the official toll, which does not include deaths believed to have been caused by other factors.

Meanwhile, the Japanese prefecture of Osaka has issued a COVID-19 alert, urging residents to stay home as much as possible until mid-December as it faces a surge in cases that have put health systems on the verge of collapse.

"Our medical systems are in an emergency," Osaka Governor Hirofumi Yoshimura said on Thursday.

"We have to act now or we won't be able to save lives that can be saved."

Osaka reported 386 new cases Ton hursday for a prefectural total of 21,404, including 341 deaths.

Serious cases are on the rise, Yoshimura said.

With hospital beds running out, some patients have had to be sent to neighbouring prefectures for treatment.

Japan has had 153,000 confirmed cases overall since the start of the outbreak and more than 2200 deaths, according to the health ministry.

The situation appears to be easing in India, which has reported less than 40,000 new daily coronavirus cases for a fourth straight day.

With 35,551 new infections reported, India's total confirmed cases crossed 9.5 million on Thursday.

Its single-day cases have remained below the 50,000 level for more than three weeks.

The health ministry also reported 526 deaths in the past 24 hours, taking India's total confirmed fatalities to 138,648.

India's capital reported 3,944 new cases in the past 24 hours with positivity rate at a two-month low of 5 per cent.

Australian Associated Press