A pandemic of the novel coronavirus has now infected more than 94.2 million people worldwide and killed over 2 million of them, according to real-time data compiled by the Center for Systems Science and Engineering at Johns Hopkins University.
Here's how the news developed this week. All times Eastern.
Jan 11, 2021, 12:36 PM EST
Single greatest cause of line-of-duty officers deaths last year was COVID-19
COVID-19 killed more law enforcement officers in the line of duty than anything else in 2020, according to a new report.
The National Law Enforcement Officers Memorial Fund report found that 145 of the 264 federal, state, military, tribal and local law enforcement officer deaths last year were related to COVID-19, with that number expected to rise as more deaths from the virus are confirmed. Other officer fatalities in 2020 included car crashes, heart attacks, stroke and firearm deaths.
Last year marked the highest number of line-of-duty law enforcement deaths since 1974.
-ABC News' Brian Hartman contributed to this report.
Jan 11, 2021, 11:35 AM EST
1 American death from COVID-19 is reported every 30 seconds
It's just over a week into 2021 and the United States has already seen its worst week on record for both COVID-19 infections and deaths.
In the first 10 days of the month, the country has recorded some 2.35 million COVID-19 cases and more than 28,000 deaths from the disease. That works out to be around 163 Americans diagnosed with COVID-19 every minute, and approximately one American death from the disease reported every 30 seconds, according to an ABC News analysis of data compiled by The COVID Tracking Project, a volunteer-run effort to track the U.S. outbreak.
The U.S. has not seen a day with fewer than 100,000 new cases in more than two months, with a record-high average of 243,000 newly confirmed infections every day. In the last week alone, that average of daily cases has increased by approximately 16.3%.
A nurse wearing personal protective equipment attends to a COVID-19 patient in the intensive care unit at Martin Luther King Jr. Community Hospital in the Willowbrook neighborhood of Los Angeles, California, on Jan. 6, 2021.
Patrick T. Fallon/AFP via Getty Images
Sunday marked the 41st consecutive day with more than 1,000 fatalities from COVID-19 reported nationwide. The country's average of daily deaths jumped by 21.4% in the last seven days.
Meanwhile, more than 129,000 people are currently hospitalized with COVID-19 across the U.S. -- a number that has hovered around 130,000 for the last several days.
At the current rate, January could surpass December's staggering COVID-19 totals to become the nation's hardest hit month of the pandemic.
ABC News' Brian Hartman and Arielle Mitropoulos contributed to this report.
Jan 11, 2021, 11:11 AM EST
Pope Francis' personal doctor dies from COVID-19
Pope Francis' personal doctor has died of complications related to COVID-19, the Vatican's newspaper L’Osservatore Romano announced Saturday.
Fabrizio Soccorsi, 78, was being treated for cancer at a hospital in Rome at the time of his death, according to the newspaper.
Pope Francis conducts a Mass for the Feast of Epiphany in St. Peter's Basilica in the Vatican on Jan. 6, 2021.
Vatican Media via Reuters
Soccorsi was chosen by the pontiff to be his personal physician in 2015.
In an interview with Italian television channel Canale 5 that aired Sunday night, Francis said COVID-19 vaccinations will begin at the Vatican next week and that he will get the shot.
ABC News' Phoebe Natanson contributed to this report.
Jan 11, 2021, 10:42 AM EST
Palestinian health ministry approves Russian vaccine
Sputnik V, a COVID-19 vaccine developed by Russia, has been registered by the Palestinian Ministry of Health for emergency use in Palestinian self-ruled territory, Russia's sovereign wealth fund announced Monday.
The first shipment of doses is expected to arrive next month, according to a press release from the Russian Direct Investment Fund (RDIF), which is responsible for worldwide marketing of the vaccine.
A Palestinian health worker takes a swab sample from a woman to test for COVID-19 in the West Bank village of Dura, southwest of Hebron, on Jan. 8, 2021.
Hazem Bader/AFP via Getty Images
The RDIF didn't say how many doses would be shipped to the Palestinian Authority -- which governs parts of the West Bank under interim peace deals with Israel -- but that supplies would be facilitated by manufacturing partners in India, China, South Korea and other countries.
As of Jan. 5, the World Health Organization had recorded more than 157,000 confirmed cases of COVID-19 in the occupied Palestinian territories, including at least 1,578 deaths.
ABC News' Patrick Reevell contributed to this report.
