Number of COVID-19 cases around the world up 1,000 times over year-long pandemic

The overall list of those who have contracted the virus over the year-long pandemic has been up 1,000 times to about 118 million, with 21 countries having more than one million infected each.
The WHO registered the highest daily growth on December 20, 2020 - more than 843,200 new cases, which is more than has been identified throughout the pandemic in Portugal (812,000), TASS reports.
The year-long pandemic has claimed more than 2.6 million lives. The highest mortality rate (16,635) was on January 22, 2021, which is 57 times above the level of March 11, 2020.
Scientists managed to promptly decode the coronavirus genome and create vaccines against the infection. However, they have not yet identified the source of the pandemic or come close to an explanation why infection spreads differently in countries with similar climatic and socio-economic conditions.
First wave
The first reports of an outbreak of an unknown disease, classified as COVID-19, arrived from China in December 2019. Toward the end of January about 10,000 people contracted the virus. The outbreak turned out to be worse than the 2002-2003 atypical pneumonia epidemic in China. On January 30, it was recognized as an international medical emergency.
By the moment the WHO made a decision to declare a pandemic, China had managed to stop its proliferation by and large. Europe was recognized as the epicenter. The situation in Italy and Spain was particularly serious, with thousands of new cases exposed every day. In the meantime, the epidemic situation in Eastern and Northern Europe remained rather calm.
After Europe the infection began to quickly spread in the United States, where tens of thousands of newly infected patients began to be identified everyday starting from the second half of March. In India, only 56 cases of the infection were exposed at the moment the pandemic broke out.
Geographically the coronavirus pandemic is very uneven. Some countries have experienced only one outbreak of the infection, while others have already seen a fourth upsurge. Situations vary greatly even in neighboring countries with similar living standards and climatic conditions.
American epicenter
The United States, where more COVID-19 patients have been registered than elsewhere (29 million), three waves were observed in the spring (the April peak - 33,500 a day), the summer (74,400 in July) and the autumn and winter (313,500 in January).
In neighboring Canada there were two waves. During the first one in May 2,000-3,000 cases were recorded a day. The second wave began six months later to reach the maximum in early January, when up to 10,000 new cases occurred daily. Two upsurges were identified in Mexico: one lasted from April to August, and the other began in November. It happened to be much stronger than the first one (more than 22,000 cases a day).
Brazil is now living through a second wave. The country is in third place as to the number of those infected (more than 11 million). In Colombia, (2.3 million cases), the third wave is coming to an end. It is the strongest, with a daily peak of 21,000 infected observed in January.
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