A customer carries items at a Costco store in New York, the United States, on Jan. 9, 2021. The total number of COVID-19 cases in the United States topped 22 million on Saturday, according to the Center for Systems Science and Engineering (CSSE) at Johns Hopkins University. (Xinhua/Wang Ying)

NEW YORK, Jan. 9 (Xinhua) -- The total number of COVID-19 cases in the United States topped 22 million on Saturday, according to the Center for Systems Science and Engineering (CSSE) at Johns Hopkins University.

U.S. COVID-19 case count rose to 22,035,618, with a total of 371,260 deaths, as of 3:21 p.m. local time (2021 GMT), according to the CSSE tally.

California reported 2,649,119 cases, followed by Texas with 1,943,625 cases and Florida with 1,464,697 cases. The states of New York and Illinois both registered more than 1 million cases.

Other states with over 550,000 cases include Ohio, Georgia, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, North Carolina, Arizona, Michigan and Indiana, the CSSE data showed.

By far, the United States remains the nation worst hit by the pandemic, with the world's most cases and deaths, making up more than 24 percent of the global caseload and over 19 percent of the global deaths.

U.S. COVID-19 cases reached 20 million on Jan. 1, and the number increased by 1 million every four days since then.

The country identified 283,204 new cases on Friday, the second highest rise in confirmed infections in a single day since the pandemic began, the CSSE chart showed.

With a daily toll of 4,194 on Thursday, the United States went through the deadliest day ever since the onset of the pandemic.

A national ensemble forecast updated Thursday by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention predicted a total of 405,000 to 438,000 coronavirus deaths in the United States by Jan. 30, 2021.