Covid-19 Worldwide Cases Surpass 9 Million, WHO Warns the Pandemic Is “Accelerating”

Last Sunday (June 21, 2020), the World Health Organization has reported the largest single-day increase in coronavirus cases by its count, with at least 183,000 new confirmed cases in the prior 24 hours. 

As of today, global Covid-19 infections already surpassed 9 million with more than 470,000 deaths.   

WHO director general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus warned on Monday that the pandemic is accelerating. It took more than 3 months for the first one million cases to be reported, but the last one million cases were reported in 8 days, said at the media briefing in Geneva.

WHO highlighted that latest pandemic is peaking because it is developing in populous countries at the same time such as in the U.S. (2,311,997), Brazil (1,106,470), Russia (591,465) and India (425,282).

In addition, WHO addressed that the record number of coronavirus cases is not because of more countries testing. “We do not believe that this is a testing phenomenon,” Mike Ryan, executive director of the WHO’s emergencies program.

“Clearly when you look at the hospital admissions, [they] are also rising in a number of countries and deaths are also rising. They’re not due to increased testing per se. So there definitely is a shift in the sense that the virus is now very well established on a global level,” he said.