MOSCOW, December 23. /TASS/. The overall number of novel coronavirus cases worldwide exceeded 77.95 million, or more than 1% of the Earth’s population, according to TASS calculations based on data from authorities, experts and media.
The United Nations Population Fund estimated the planet’s population to be at 7.795 billion people in mid-2020. Therefore, every 100th person on the Earth has already contracted the virus.
The biggest percentage of infected citizens was registered in countries where the overall population is relatively low, such as Andorra (9.9% of the population, or 7,633 cases), Luxemburg (7.3% or 44,809) and Montenegro (7.2%, or 44,542 cases). In the United States, which has the world’s biggest number of cases and fatalities, a total of 5.6% of the population have contracted the novel coronavirus (over 18.2 million people). In Russia, the figure stands at about 1.9%, or 2.9 million people.
The pace of the infection continues to increase worldwide. Before the second wave of the disease broke out in many countries, about 300,000 new cases of COVID-19 were registered every day. The numbers doubled by October, reaching a daily average of approximately 600,000. The all-time high daily number of coronavirus cases was registered on December 20, when 800,000 new cases of the infection were reported worldwide.
At the same time, mortality slightly declined compared to the first wave of the pandemic, when fatalities accounted for 6-7% of all confirmed cases. At present, the overall number of coronavirus-related deaths worldwide stands at more than 1.7 million, or 2.2% of all registered cases.