Coronavirus updates: Global death toll surpasses 1 million
The United States leads the world in deaths, with a fifth of all fatalities.
A pandemic of the novel coronavirus has now killed more than 1 million people worldwide.
Over 33.2 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 7.1 million diagnosed cases and at least 204,778 deaths.
California has the most cases of any U.S. state, with more than 809,000 people diagnosed, according to Johns Hopkins data. California is followed by Texas and Florida, with over 758,000 cases and over 700,000 cases, respectively.
Nearly 190 vaccine candidates for COVID-19 are being tracked by the World Health Organization, at least nine of which are in crucial phase three trials.
Latest headlines:
Weekly cases up more than 9% but deaths down slightly
New COVID-19 cases in the U.S. are continuing to climb, while the death rate declined slightly from last week, according to an internal FEMA memo obtained by ABC News.
Twenty-six states and territories are seeing an upward trajectory of new cases, with 17 seeing cases go down and 13 experiencing a plateau, the memo said.
The 309,070 new cases reported during the week of Sept. 21-27 represent a 9.1% increase over the previous seven-day period, said the memo.
The 5,304 deaths recorded during the week is a 0.3% decrease from the previous week.
The nation's test-positivity rate was unchanged at 4.4%, according to the memo.
Chicago easing restrictions on restaurants, bars
Chicago officials are loosening COVID-19 restrictions on restaurants, bars, and other select businesses.
Citing a drop in the city's daily case rate, Mayor Lori Lightfoot announced that establishments with indoor seating will be able to serve at 40% of capacity, up from the 25% capacity those establishments had been limited to.
Bars will be able to operate at up to 25% capacity, and fitness classes will be able to admit up to 15 participants, as part of the updated regulations.
The new rules will go into effect on Thursday.
Global death toll surpasses 1 million
The coronavirus has killed over 1 million people worldwide, according to data from the Center for Systems Science and Engineering at Johns Hopkins University.
By comparison, six U.S. states have a population under a million people, as do three dozen nations including Fiji, Guyana, Luxembourg, Iceland and the Bahamas.
The global death toll reached half a million at the end of June, more than five months after the first COVID-19 related death was recorded in China. It took three months for that number to double worldwide.
The United States leads the world in deaths, with over 205,000 fatalities and counting. Brazil has the second most deaths with over 141,000 and counting.
The two previous major global pandemics, the 1957-1958 H2N2 pandemic and the 1968 H3N2 pandemic, each also killed around 1 million people worldwide, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The 1918 Spanish flu, the worst pandemic in modern times, killed an estimated 50 million people worldwide.
9th ICE detainee dies of coronavirus
Representatives from U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement announced Monday that a 56-year-old man who was in their custody died from COVID-19 in a Louisiana hospital.
Romien Jally was the ninth ICE detainee reported to die from the virus, as well as the 22nd person to die in ICE custody this fiscal year -- the highest number of deaths in ICE custody in the last 15 years.
There were only eight reported deaths of ICE detainees during the previous fiscal year, according to the agency.
Jally initially entered the U.S. lawfully on October 24, 2003, in Honolulu, Hawaii, under the Compact of Free Association as a nonimmigrant, ICE said.
He was arrested on May 1 on sex assault charges and was ordered to be deported to the Marshall Islands on Aug 4, according to ICE.
Jally was diagnosed with the virus on Aug. 25.
'We're not in a good place,' Fauci warns
The United States is "not in a good place" as some areas report upticks in COVID-19 infections and hospitalizations, according to Dr. Anthony Fauci, the nation's leading infectious diseases expert.
"As we get into the fall and the winter, you really want the level of community spread to be as low as you possibility get it," Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and a key member of the White House coronavirus task force, told ABC News in an interview Monday on "Good Morning America."
"There's certainly parts of the country that are doing well," he added. "But ... there are states that are starting to show uptick in cases and even some increases in hospitalizations in some states. And, I hope not but, we very well might start seeing increases in deaths."
"You don't want to be in a position like that as the weather starts getting cold," he warned. "So we really need to intensify the public health measures that we talk about all the time."
When asked about Florida's recent decision to reopen bars and restaurants at full capacity and suspend fines for not wearing masks, Fauci called it "very concerning."
"That is something that we really need to be careful about, because when you're dealing with community spread and you have the kind of congregate setting where people get together particularly without masks, you're really asking for trouble," he said. "Now's the time actually to double down a bit."
That doesn't mean another shutdown, he noted.
"We're not talking about shutting anything down. We're talking about common sense type of public health measures that we've been talking about all along," he said. "Obviously, if things really explode you'd have to consider that. But we want to do everything we possibly can to avoid an absolute shutdown."
As the global death toll from the coronavirus pandemic edges closer to 1 million, Fauci warned that the situation is "very serious."
"You got to take it very seriously," he said.
