Global COVID-19 cases reported to WHO top 100m

The number of COVID-19 cases worldwide has surpassed 100 million, according to the latest numbers from the World Health Organization on Thursday.

Globally, as of 10:05 am CEST (0905 GMT) on Thursday, there have been 100,200,107 confirmed cases of COVID-19, including 2,158,761 deaths, reported to the WHO.

The US, India and Brazil remain the top three in confirmed cases, having reported 25,198,841 cases, 10,701,193 cases and 8,933,356 cases respectively.

Following the top three are Russia with 3,774,672 cases, the UK with 3,689,750 cases, France with 3,029,792 cases, Spain with 2,629,817, Italy with 2,485,956 cases, Turkey with 2,442,350 cases, Germany with 2,161,279, and Colombia with 2,041,352 cases.

Countries with more than one million confirmed cases also include Argentina, Mexico, Poland, South Africa, Iran, Ukraine, Peru, and Indonesia.

The US, Brazil and India have also suffered with the most death tolls, recording 421,570 death cases, 218,878 deaths, and 153,847 deaths respectively. Mexico and the UK have also recorded more than 100,000 death cases.

According to WHO regional offices, Americas remains the most impacted area by COVID-19, with a total of 44,471,901 confirmed cases and 1,023,375 deaths, followed by Europe where 33,472,928 confirmed cases and 722,740 deaths have been reported.

"Numbers can make us numb to what they represent: every death is someone's parent, someone's partner, someone's child, someone's friend," said WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus recently. He has called for vaccination of health workers and older people to be underway in all countries within the first 100 days of 2021.

Mike Ryan, executive director of the WHO's Health Emergencies Program, has said that 100 million confirmed COVID-19 cases globally is a "grim and shocking" milestone, but it "doesn't change the rules of the game; it doesn't change what you do."

Ryan believes that the prospect of vaccines will have a major impact on the global pandemic "once we have vulnerable populations vaccinated... That's the first thing we need to deal with."