For the second time in a row, the world notched another 1 million coronavirus cases in just 12 days as the global tally surpassed 5 million confirmed cases on Thursday, even as some nations eased lockdowns.
The total crossed the 5 million mark — up from 4 million on May 9 and 3 million on April 27 — and the global death toll reached more than 328,000, according to Johns Hopkins University and Google data trackers.
The increasing number of cases of COVID-19, the infectious disease caused by the newly discovered coronavirus, was due not only to the spread of the virus but also due to more testing.
The United States had the largest number of cases in the world, but other populous nations such as Brazil and Russia have been reporting more cases. The largest outbreaks are now in those three nations.
Latin America was reporting the most new daily cases, which was previously occurring in the United States and Europe, and before that, in Wuhan, China, where the virus was first detected in late December and the first several dozen cases were confirmed on January 10.
The World Health Organization declared the coronavirus outbreak as a global health emergency on January 30.
Ater the number of cases exceeded 100,000, WHO classified it as a global pandemic on March 11, marking the first time that a coronavirus has gained the distinction of becoming a worldwide disease.
Despite the continued rising number of cases, some Western European countries such as Germany and Switzerland were seeing improvement, and some nations around the world were seeking to reopen their battered economies by loosening their social distancing guidelines.
