Happy Wednesday! Three more TMDs until the weekend.

Quick Hits: Today’s Top Stories

• As of Tuesday night, there are now 1,369,386 confirmed cases of COVID-19 in the United States (an increase of 21,505/1.6 percent from yesterday) and 82,356 deaths attributed to the virus (an increase of 1,959/2.4 percent from yesterday), according to the Johns Hopkins University COVID-19 Dashboard, leading to a mortality rate among confirmed cases of 6 percent (the true mortality rate is likely lower, but it’s impossible to determine precisely due to incomplete testing regimens). Of 9,637,930 coronavirus tests conducted in the United States (255,695 conducted since yesterday), 14.2 percent have come back positive.

• Dr. Anthony Fauci testified before the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee on Tuesday, telling senators that a vaccine would likely not be ready “to facilitate reentry of students into the fall term,” but that “it is much more likely than not that we will get a vaccine” within the next year or two. He added that the virus’s death toll in the United States is “almost certainly” higher than the figures currently being reported, and argued there is a “real risk that you will trigger an outbreak” if states begin reopening too soon.

• In the same hearing, coronavirus testing czar Adm. Brett Giroir told lawmakers he hopes the United States will be able to conduct 40 million to 50 million COVID-19 tests per month by September. Slightly fewer than 10 million tests have been conducted since the pandemic began.