NEW YORK, Jan. 18 (Xinhua) -- The total number of COVID-19 cases in the United States topped 24 million on Monday, according to the Center for Systems Science and Engineering (CSSE) at Johns Hopkins University.

U.S. COVID-19 case count rose to 24,018,793 with a total of 398,307 deaths, as of 2:21 p.m. local time (1921 GMT), according to the CSSE tally.

With 3,005,830 cases reported, California turned to be the first U.S. state to have more than 3 million cases. Texas identified 2,127,745 cases, followed by Florida with 1,579,281 cases and New York with 1,255,971 cases. Illinois also registered more than 1 million cases.

Other states with over 630,000 cases include Ohio, Georgia, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, North Carolina, Arizona and New Jersey, 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 25 percent of the global caseload and over 19 percent of the global deaths.

An updated model forecast by the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation at the University of Washington projected a total of 566,720 COVID-19 deaths in the United States by May 1, 2021, based on the current projection scenario.