PARIS, Sept 18, 2020 
– The number of coronavirus cases registered
worldwide topped 30 million on Thursday, according to an AFP tally based on
official sources.
The grim landmark came as the World Health Organization warned of “alarming
rates of transmission” of Covid-19 across Europe.
The tallies, using data collected by AFP from national authorities and
information from the World Health Organization (WHO), probably reflect only a
fraction of the actual number of infections.
Many countries are testing only symptomatic or the most serious cases.
The coronavirus death toll is now at 943,086 since it surfaced in China
late last year and the number of cases has ballooned to 30,000,062, according
to figures available at 19:45 GMT.
The United States has the highest national figures with 6,650,570 cases and
197,364 deaths, followed by India at 5,118,253 infections and 83,198
fatalities and Brazil with 4,419,083 cases and 134,106 deaths.
The rhythm of the pandemic seems to have stabilised globally since the
middle of July with a million new cases surfacing every four days.
It took 94 days to hit a million infections and then another 86 days for
the number of cases to cross 10 million on June 28.
The number of infections has tripled since then.
Asia has registered the most new cases in the past week with 742,286
infections, of which more than 80 percent are in India.
Latin America and the Caribbean are next at 493,120, followed by Europe
(327.524), Canada and the US (273,339), the Middle East (111,986), Africa
(52,584) and Oceania (548).
Latin America has 8,484,443 infections in all and 316,827 deaths, followed
by Asia (6,861,965 cases and 120,334 deaths).
Canada and the US have nearly 6.8 million cases and 206,602 deaths, Europe
has 4,700,387 infections and 223,849 deaths and the Middle East has 1,750,232
cases and 41,254 deaths.
Africa has recorded 1,381,036 cases and 33,324 deaths followed by Oceania
at 30,890 infections and 896 deaths.
India recorded the most number of new infections in the past week at
650,231, followed by Canada and the United States at 267,995, Brazil
(221,194), Argentina (76,719) and Spain (70,981).
The number of new cases rose 39 percent in the UK the past week, 22 percent
in Canada, 19 percent in France, 11 percent in Brazil, 9 percent in the US
and 8 percent in India.