The official COVID-19 case count worldwide surpassed 250 million on Monday, according to figures from Johns Hopkins University and a tally conducted by Agence France-Presse based on official sources. The American university recorded 250,246,902 cases of the virus globally and 5,054,097 deaths from the disease since the World Health Organization reported the emergence of the illness in China at the end of December 2019. A significant proportion of milder or asymptomatic cases remain undetected despite intensified testing in many countries.
According to the Agence France-Presse tally, Europe, the region most affected by the pandemic in terms of the number of cases, has accounted for over 76 million COVID-19 cases. Asia follows in second place with 56,201,653 cases, then the United States and Canada with 48,290,522 cases, and then Latin America and the Caribbean with 46,107,131 cases, according to France Press. In recent weeks, the global rate of infections has been slowly increasing, with an average of 449,000 new cases reported daily over the last seven days, compared to just over 400,000 cases per day in mid-October. Europe currently accounts for more than 60 percent of registered cases worldwide, with an average of 279,000 cases per day over the past week, according to the agency.
