WHO predicts global COVID-19 cases to reach 10 million next week

Director-General of the World Health Organization (WHO) Tedros Ghebreyesus said on Wednesday (local time) that the accumulated number of COVID-19 cases across the world will reach 10 million next week. It has been six months since China reported its first case to the organization on December 31, 2019.

“The globally accumulated numbers of patients and deaths stand at 9.1 million and 470,000, respectively, as of now. The number of cases will soon reach 10 million,” the director-general said during a video press conference at the WHO headquarters in Geneva on Wednesday.

According to the data of the international statistics website Worldometers, the number of global cases surpassed 10,000 on January 31 and exceeded 100,000 on March 6. As the virus has entered the stage of a pandemic, the number reached one million on April 2 and five million on May 20.

The WHO pointed to the virus’ resurgence in the U.S. and spread in Latin America for reasons behind the continued outbreak of the virus. The U.S.’ number of daily new cases reached 38,672 on Wednesday, breaking the previous highest record of 36,291 on April 24. It is deemed that the resumption of economic activities since May is causing the secondary outbreak.


Youn-Jong Kim zozo@donga.com · Ji-Sun Choi aurinko@donga.com