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Washington: The total global covid-19 caseload has topped 91 million, while the deaths have surged to more than 1.96 million, according to the Johns Hopkins University.
In its latest update on Wednesday morning, the University's Center for Systems Science and Engineering (CSSE) revealed that the current global caseload and death toll stood at 91,573,149 and 1,961,987, respectively.
The US is the worst-hit country with the world's highest number of cases and deaths at 22,836,244 and 380,651, respectively, according to the CSSE.
India comes in second place in terms of cases at 10,479,179, while the country's death toll soared to 151,327.
The other countries with more than a million confirmed cases are Brazil (8,195,637), Russia (3,412,390), the UK (3,173,274), France (2,864,360), Turkey (2,346,285), Italy (2,303,263), Spain (2,137,220), Germany (1,957,898), Colombia (1,816,082), Argentina (1,744,704), Mexico (1,556,028), Poland (1,395,779), Iran (1,299,022), South Africa (1,259,748), Ukraine (1,160,243) and Peru (1,037,350), the CSSE figures showed.
Brazil currently accounts for the second highest number of fatalities at 204,690.
The countries with a death toll above 20,000 are Mexico (135,682), the UK (83,342), Italy (79,819), France (68,939), Russia (61,908), Iran (56,360), Spain (52,683), Colombia (46,782), Argentina (44,848), Germany (42,259), Peru (38,335), South Africa (33,334), Poland (31,593), Indonesia (24,645), Turkey (23,152), Ukraine (20,915) and Belgium (20,122).
Russia confirms 22,934 new Covid-19 cases
Russia confirmed 22,934 new COVID-19 cases in the past 24 hours, taking the country's total caseload to 3,448,203, the country's COVID-19 response center said in a statement.
The number of deaths increased by 531 to 62,804.
Moscow, which remains to be hardest-hit, has logged a total of 867,215 cases, including 5,001 cases in the past 24 hours, Xinhua news agency reported on Tuesday.
Meanwhile, the country reported 24,755 new recoveries in the past 24 hours, bringing the total to 2,825,430.
Russian authorities said the country detected its first case of a new infectious coronavirus strain on Sunday, which was first discovered in Britain last month.
Russia on Tuesday decided to extend its suspension of flights to and from Britain until February 1, amid concerns over the new COVID-19 variant.
Vaccination gathers pace in Europe amid new Covid-19 variants
As concerns over new Covid-19 variants and high death toll from the pandemic linger in a large part of Europe, many European countries have pinned their hope of getting over the pathogen on vaccines, speeding up vaccination as a way out of the scourge.
"As we enter 2021, over 230 million people in the European Region are living in countries under full national lockdown, with more countries set to announce lockdown measures in the coming week," World Health Organization (WHO) Regional Director for Europe Hans Kluge said last week, Xinhua news agency reported on Tuesday.
"We were prepared for a challenging start to 2021 and it has been just that," he said.
Virus transmission across Europe has stayed at a very high rate. As of January 6, among all countries and territories in Europe, almost half had a seven-day incidence of over 150 new cases per 100,000 population, and one quarter were seeing a greater-than-ten-per cent increase in case incidence over the past two-week period, according to Kluge.
Meanwhile, 22 countries in the WHO European Region have detected a new coronavirus variant called B117, which, by the WHO's assessment, may over time replace other circulating lineages, as seen in Britain and increasingly in Denmark.
Kluge said that while producing no significant changes so far to Covid-19, the new variant does raise alarm that without increased control to slow its spread, there will be an increased impact on the already strained health facilities.
(With IANS Inputs)
