Tedros Adhanom-Ghebreyesus, director-general of the World Health Organization, on Wednesday said that more cases had been reported to the agency in the past 24 hours than any time since the novel coronavirus pandemic began.
“We still have a long way to go in this pandemic,” Tedros said at a briefing in Geneva. “In the last 24 hours, there have been 106,000 cases reported to WHO -- the most in a single day since the outbreak began. Almost two-thirds of these cases were reported in just four countries.”
Those four countries are the United States, Russia, Brazil and India, WHO infectious disease epidemiologist Maria Van Kerkhove confirmed to CNN.
It is important to note: There can be delays in reporting at many points in the process, so this single-day high does not mean that these 106,000 people were infected, tested or counted in the past 24 hours.
CNN relies exclusively on Johns Hopkins University for its case and death counts, but the world’s preeminent health agency making this announcement today is newsworthy.