U.S. COVID-19 cases surpass 30 mln -- Johns Hopkins University

NEW YORK, March 24 (Xinhua) -- The total number of COVID-19 cases in the United States topped 30 million on Wednesday, according to the Center for Systems Science and Engineering (CSSE) at Johns Hopkins University.

U.S. COVID-19 case count rose to 30,001,245, with a total of 545,053 deaths, as of 6:27 p.m. local time (2227 GMT), according to the CSSE tally.

California topped the state-level caseload list, with 3,647,735 cases. Texas confirmed the second most cases of 2,765,635, followed by Florida with 2,021,656 cases, New York with 1,814,662 cases, and Illinois with more than 1.2 million cases.

Other states with over 800,000 cases include Georgia, Ohio, Pennsylvania, North Carolina, New Jersey, Arizona and Tennessee, the CSSE data showed.

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 nearly 20 percent of the global deaths.

U.S. COVID-19 cases reached 10 million on Nov. 9, 2020, and the number doubled on Jan. 1, 2021. Ever since the beginning of 2021, the country has added 10 million new cases.

A national ensemble forecast updated Wednesday by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) predicted that the number of newly reported COVID-19 cases over the next four weeks will remain stable or have an uncertain trend, with 176,000 to 544,000 new cases likely reported by April 17.

The CDC also projected a total of 558,000 to 578,000 coronavirus deaths in the United States by April 17.