Global coronavirus infections crossed the 75 million mark on Saturday, according to the World Health Organization. The data was released as several nations around the world, including Israel, begin vaccinating against the virus.
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Britain this month became the first Western country to start immunizing with the COVID-19 vaccine developed by Pfizer and its German partner BioNtech, followed by the United States which has now also approved a vaccine from Moderna.
Israel is expected to roll out its mass vaccination campaign this week. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was vaccinated against the coronavirus on live television Saturday, becoming the first Israeli and one of the world's leaders to be inoculated.
Europe remains the region with the most cases (21.6 million), followed by North America (17.9 million), Latin America (14.5 million), and Asia with 13 million coronavirus cases.
In Europe, a million new cases were recorded over just five days, with Russia and France reporting more than 2 million cases since the coronavirus outbreak began. The United Kingdom and Italy both have approximately 1.9 million cases each.
A new strain of COVID-19 identified in the United Kingdom can spread more quickly and urgent work is under way to confirm that it does not cause a higher mortality rate, Britain's Chief Medical Officer Chris Whitty said on Saturday.
"As announced on Monday, the UK has identified a new variant of COVID-19 through Public Health England's genomic surveillance. As a result of the rapid spread of the new variant, preliminary modeling data and rapidly rising incidence rates in the South East, the New and Emerging Respiratory Virus Threats Advisory Group now consider that the new strain can spread more quickly," Whitty said in a statement.
British Prime Minister Boris Johnson said on Friday he hoped England would not need to go into a third lockdown after Christmas and has so far resisted calls to change plans to ease restrictions for five days over the festive period, allowing three separate households to meet indoors.
Much of the country, including London, is currently in the highest of a three-tier system of restrictions to curb the spread.
The United States became the first country in the world to record more than 300,000 deaths last Monday. The nation is reporting more than 2,500 deaths daily, according to a Reuters analysis of data from the previous seven days.
Hospitals across the United States have begun giving the first shots of the Pfizer-BioNtech vaccine.
The United States remains the country with most cases – more than 17 million since the outbreak started – followed by India and Brazil respectively. With just 4% of the world's population, the United States has about 23% of all global cases.
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Brazil registered a single-day record of 70,000 new cases on Wednesday, joining the United States and India as the only countries to have reported more than 7 million total infections. With almost 180,000 confirmed fatalities, the South American nation has the second-highest death toll in the world.
On Saturday, India exceeded 10 million coronavirus infections. India has prepared to deliver 600 million doses of COVID-19 vaccines to the most vulnerable people in the next six to eight months.
i24NEWS contributed to this report.
