More than 700,000 new confirmed cases of novel coronavirus have been recorded globally in the past day, pushing a total number of infections to 74.2 million, the World Health Organization (WHO) said in its daily bulletin on Saturday, Trend reports citing TASS.
According to the WHO updates, the coronavirus-related deaths increased by over 13,000 to exceed 1.66 million.
As of 19.22 Moscow time on December 19, as many as 74,299,042 coronavirus cases and 1,669,982 coronavirus-related deaths were registered across the globe. The number of confirmed cases grew by 700,846 in the past 24 hours and the number of fatalities increased by 13,289.
The WHO statistics are based only on officially confirmed data provided by countries.
South and North America account for more than 50% of new COVID-19 cases submitted to the WHO in the past 24 hours (352,665). Europe goes second (265,890 cases) followed by South East Asia (35,166).
Most COVID-19 cases are recorded in the United States (16,912,564), followed by India (10,004,599), Brazil (7,110,434), Russia (2,819,429), France (2,401,113), the UK (1,977,171), Italy (1,921,778), Spain (1,797,236), Argentina (1,524,372), Germany (1,471,238), Colombia (1,468,795), and Mexico (1,289,298).