More than 50 million new coronavirus infections have been detected worldwide, according to a tally from official sources.
A total of more than 50,010,400 cases, including 1,251,980 deaths, have been recorded worldwide since the pandemic broke out in China in December last year.
Europe, with 12.6 million confirmed cases for more than 305,700 deaths, has once again become the epicenter of the pandemic.
Last week, of more than 3.9 million new cases recorded worldwide, more than half (2.1 million) were in the 52 countries of the European continent.
In the past seven days, the European countries with the highest number of new infections have been France with 381,000 new cases, Italy (223,000), the United Kingdom (160,000), Poland ( 159,000) and Spain (143,000).
The United States, which has seen a slight respite over the summer, has seen the number of daily infections surpass 100,000 cases in recent days.
The country is approaching 10 million confirmed cases for more than 237,000 deaths, or a fifth of all infections detected worldwide.
And the number of positive cases continues to increase, with a 36% increase in new infections detected in one week (738,000) compared to the previous one (542,000).
After Europe, the most affected regions are Latin America and the Caribbean with 11.6 million infections and 411,700 deaths and Asia with 11 million cases and nearly 177,000 deaths.
Next come the United States and Canada with 10.1 million cases and 247,000 deaths, the Middle East (2.7 million cases and 64,500 deaths, Africa (1.9 million cases and 44,800 deaths) and Oceania with nearly 30,000 infections and 941 deaths.
The counts, based on data collected by AFP from national authorities and information from the World Health Organization (WHO), probably only reflect a fraction of the actual number of infections.
Many countries test only symptomatic or more severe cases.
