PARIS, France — Global COVID-19 cases surpassed 50 million on Sunday, according to the Center for Systems Science and Engineering (CSSE) at Johns Hopkins University.
The global case count reached 50,052,204, with a total of 1,253,110 deaths worldwide as of 11:24 a.m. local time (1624 GMT), the CSSE data showed.
The United States reported the most cases and deaths around the world, which stood at 9,879,323 and 237,192, respectively. India recorded 8,507,754 cases, ranking second in the world.
Brazil followed India with 5,653,561 cases and 162,269 deaths, the world’s second largest death toll.
Countries with more than 1.1 million cases also include Russia, France, Spain, Argentina, Britain and Colombia, while other countries with over 40,000 deaths include India, Mexico, Britain, Italy and France, according to the center.
Global cases topped 30 million on Sept. 17, and rose to 40 million on Oct. 19. It took 32 days for the global caseload to jump from 30 million to 40 million, and only 20 days from 40 million to 50 million.
Europe, with 12.6 million confirmed cases for more than 305,700 deaths, has once again become the epicenter of the pandemic. Last week, out of the more than 3.9 million new cases recorded in the world, more than half (2.1 million) were in the 52 countries of the European continent.
In the last seven days, the European countries that registered the largest number of new infections were France with 381,000 new cases, Italy (223,000), the United Kingdom (160,000), Poland (159,000), and Spain (143,000).
The United States, which experienced a slight respite over the summer, has seen the number of daily infections top 100,000 cases for the last few days.
The country is approaching 10 million confirmed cases for more than 237,000 deaths, or a fifth of all the infections detected in the world.
And the number of positive cases is continuing to climb, with an increase of 36 percent in new infections detected in a week (738,000) compared to the preceding one (542,000).
After Europe, the worst-hit regions are Latin America and the Caribbean with 11.6 millions infections and 411,700 deaths and Asia with 11 million cases and nearly 177,000 deaths.
Next is the United States and Canada with 10.1 million cases and 247,000 deaths, the Middle East (2.7 million cases and 64,500 deaths, Africa (1.9 million cases and 44,800 deaths) and Oceania with nearly 30,000 infections and 941 deaths.
The tallies, using data collected by AFP from national authorities and information from the World Health Organization (WHO), probably reflect only a fraction of the actual number of infections.
Many countries are testing only symptomatic or the most serious cases.
