Coronavirus updates: US will soon have 'half a million' deaths, CDC says

Japan has identified a new variant of COVID-19, Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, director-general of the World Health Organization, said during a Monday news conference.

Japanese health officials alerted the WHO of the new variant, which is different than COVID-19 variants first identified in the U.K. and in South Africa, over the weekend. High transmission of the virus in much of the world is giving it more chances to mutate and evolve into new variants.

"Most notably, transmissibility of some variants of the virus appears to be increasing," Tedros said. "This can drive a surge of cases and hospitalizations, which is highly problematic for health workers and hospitals already close to breaking point," he added.

"At present, the variants do not seem to show increased severity of disease," Tedros said.

-ABC News' Christine Theodorou contributed to this report.

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.

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%.

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.

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.

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.