Live

Coronavirus updates: Trump calls diagnosis 'blessing in disguise'

Oregon is facing "explosive growth in case counts."

ByMorgan Winsor and Emily Shapiro
Video byJessie DiMartino
Last Updated: October 8, 2020, 5:48 AM EDT

A pandemic of the novel coronavirus has now killed more than 1 million people worldwide.

Over 36 million people across the globe have been diagnosed with COVID-19, the disease caused by the new respiratory virus, according to data compiled by the Center for Systems Science and Engineering at Johns Hopkins University. The criteria for diagnosis -- through clinical means or a lab test -- has varied from country-to-country. Still, the actual numbers are believed to be much higher due to testing shortages, many unreported cases and suspicions that some national governments are hiding or downplaying the scope of their outbreaks.

Since the first cases were detected in China in December, the virus has rapidly spread to every continent except Antarctica.

The United States is the worst-affected country, with more than 7.5 million diagnosed cases and at least 211,725 deaths.

California has the most cases of any U.S. state, with more than 841,000 people diagnosed, according to Johns Hopkins data. California is followed by Texas and Florida, with over 803,000 cases and over 722,000 cases, respectively.

More than 190 vaccine candidates for COVID-19 are being tracked by the World Health Organization, at least seven of which are in crucial phase three trials.

Latest headlines:

Here's how the news is developing today. All times Eastern.
Oct 07, 2020, 4:36 AM EDT

US case count tops 7.5 million

There were 43,563 new cases of COVID-19 identified in the United States on Tuesday, driving the country's cumulative total past 7.5 million, according to a real-time count kept by Johns Hopkins University.

The latest daily tally is far less than the country’s record set on July 16, when there were 77,255 new cases in a 24-hour-reporting period.

An additional 705 coronavirus-related fatalities were also recorded Tuesday, down from a peak of 2,666 new fatalities reported on April 17.

A COVID-19 testing center staff member waits to check in people in the Borough Park neighborhood in the Brooklyn borough of New York City on Oct. 6, 2020.
Angela Weiss/AFP via Getty Images

A total of 7,501,816 people in the United States have been diagnosed with COVID-19 since the pandemic began, and at least 210,909 of them have died, according to Johns Hopkins. The cases include people from all 50 U.S. states, Washington, D.C. and other U.S. territories as well as repatriated citizens.

By May 20, all U.S. states had begun lifting stay-at-home orders and other restrictions put in place to curb the spread of the novel coronavirus. The day-to-day increase in the country's cases then hovered around 20,000 for a couple of weeks before shooting back up and crossing 70,000 for the first time in mid-July. The daily tally of new cases has gradually come down since then but has hovered around 40,000 in recent weeks.

An internal memo from the Federal Emergency Management Agency obtained by ABC News on Tuesday night shows that the number of new cases recorded in the United States as well as the number of new deaths are both down in week-over-week comparisons.

Related Topics