Global coronavirus cases exceed 50 million after 30-day spike

The pandemic’s recent acceleration has been ferocious. It took 32 days for the number of cases to rise from 30 million to 40 million. It took just 21 days to add another 10 million.

Europe, with about 12 million cases, is the worst-affected region, overtaking Latin America. Europe accounts for 24 percent of COVID-19 deaths.

The region is logging about 1 million new infections every three days or so, according to a Reuters analysis. That is 51 percent of the global total.

France is recording 54,440 cases a day on the latest seven-day average, a higher rate than India with a far bigger population.

The global second wave is testing healthcare systems across Europe, prompting Germany, France and Britain to order many citizens back to their homes again.

Denmark, which imposed a new lockdown on its population in several northern areas, ordered the culling of its 17 million minks after a mutation of the coronavirus found in the animals spread to humans.

The United States, with about 20 percent of global cases, is facing its worst surge, recording more than 100,000 daily coronavirus cases on the latest seven-day average, Reuters data showed. It reported a record of more than 130,000 cases on Saturday.

The latest US surge coincided with the last month of election campaigning in which President Donald Trump minimised the severity of the pandemic and his successful challenger, Joe Biden, urged a more science-based approach.

Trump’s rallies, some open-air and with few masks and little social distancing, led to 30,000 additional confirmed cases and likely led to more than 700 deaths, Stanford University economists estimated in a research paper.

In Asia, India has the world’s second-highest caseload but has seen a steady slowdown since September, despite the start of the Hindu festival season. Total cases exceeded 8.5 million cases on Friday and the daily average is 46,200, according to Reuters data.