The World Bank has warned that 150 million people could fall into "extreme poverty" by the end of 2021, due to the coronavirus pandemic and accompanying worldwide recession with the levels of poverty set to rise for the first time in 20 years.

In its biennial report on poverty and shared prosperity, the World Bank estimates between 9.1% and 9.4% of the global population would be affected by extreme poverty, which the multilateral development lender defines as living on under $1.90 a day. Had the pandemic not hit, the rate was forecast to fall to 7.9% this year.

"In order to reverse this serious setback to development progress and poverty reduction, countries will need to prepare for a different economy post-COVID, by allowing capital, labor, skills and innovation to move into new businesses and sectors," World Bank president David Malpass said in a statement Wednesday.

While extreme poverty rates are on the rise, around a quarter of the world's population live on less than $3.20 per day and more than 40% live on $5.50.

Overall, levels of extreme poverty have been steadily declining over the past quarter of a decade. Some 1.9 billion people lived in extreme poverty in 1990, compared to 689 million in 2017, according to the World Bank. In addition to the coronavirus pandemic, the report cites military conflict and climate change as two significant factors behind the recent reversal.

Extreme poverty is usually most keenly felt in rural areas, but that is now spreading to urban hubs. Around 82% of the number of people forecast to slide into extreme poverty will be living in middle-income countries, according to the report.

ABC News' Guy Davies contributed to this report.

Another 840,000 Americans sought unemployment insurance last week, according to the latest report from the U.S. Department of Labor released Thursday.

This week's claims do not include the most up-to-date data from California, which has temporarily stopped accepting new jobless claims in order to work through a backlog and implement fraud prevention technology, the department said. Instead, the figure from California will reflect the level reported during the week prior to the pause in new applications.

Still, the initial claims data reflect a labor market still suffering some six months into the coronavirus pandemic. This is the 29th straight week of weekly unemployment claims coming in above the pre-pandemic record set in 1982.

While the number of new claims has dropped slightly since peaking in late March, they have stagnated at unprecedented levels not seen prior to the COVID-19 crisis. The average for the past four weeks was 857,000 new claims per week, according to the U.S. Department of Labor.

ABC News' Catherine Thorbecke contributed to this report.

The disease caused by the novel coronavirus killed three times more people in England and Wales during the first eight months of this year than influenza and pneumonia combined, according to new data released Thursday by the U.K. Office for National Statistics (ONS).

"More than three times as many deaths were recorded between January and August this year where COVID-19 was the underlying cause compared to influenza and pneumonia," Sarah Caul, head of mortality analysis at the ONS, said in a statement. "The mortality rate for COVID-19 is also significantly higher than influenza and pneumonia rates for both 2020 and the five-year average."

The highest number of deaths due to influenza and pneumonia occurred in January; however, deaths from influenza and pneumonia were below the five-year average -- 2015 to 2019 -- in every month of 2020, according to the ONS.

"Since 1959, which is when ONS monthly death records began, the number of deaths due to influenza and pneumonia in the first eight months of every year have been lower than the number of COVID-19 deaths seen, so far, in 2020," Caul said.

Meanwhile, the proportion of deaths occurring in care homes due to COVID-19 -- 30% -- was almost double the proportion of deaths due to influenza and pneumonia -- 15.2%, according to the ONS.

The U.K. agency noted that its analysis of COVID-19, influenza and pneumonia deaths focused on fatalities where people died due to those conditions, rather than deaths where the conditions were either the underlying cause or mentioned as a contributing factor.

The number of current hospitalizations in Oklahoma due to COVID-19 has soared to a new record one-day high.

The Oklahoma State Department of Health on Wednesday reported 738 people hospitalized with either confirmed or possible cases of the disease.

Since the start of the pandemic, at least 94,352 people in Oklahoma have been diagnosed with COVID-19 and 1,075 of them have died, according to the state health department data.