A pandemic of the novel coronavirus has now infected more than 94.2 million people worldwide and killed over 2 million of them, according to real-time data compiled by the Center for Systems Science and Engineering at Johns Hopkins University.
About one in every three people in Los Angeles County has been infected with COVID-19 since the beginning of the pandemic, Los Angeles County Health Department officials said Wednesday.
Los Angeles County is close to becoming the county to reach 1 million cases. As of Thursday morning, 958,497 people in the county had been infected.
ABC News’ Bonnie Mclean contributed to this report.
The U.S. is averaging over 242,000 new cases per day, according to ABC News’ analysis of COVID Tracking Project data.
Arizona is leading the country in cases per capita.
In Virginia, Georgia and Florida, daily case numbers dwarf their respective summer peaks.
In New York, the average number of daily cases is 65% higher than during the spring surge.
ABC News’ Arielle Mitropoulos contributed to this report.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Thursday received a first dose of CoronaVac, a COVID-19 vaccine developed by Chinese biopharmaceutical company Sinovac, according to state-owned Anadolu news agency.
Turkey approved CoronaVac for emergency use on Wednesday. Turkish Health Minister Fahrettin Koca was the first person in the country to receive a dose of the vaccine.
ABC News’ Christine Theodorou contributed to this report.
Pope Francis and his predecessor, Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI, have received their first dose of a COVID-19 vaccine, according to Vatican spokesman Matteo Bruni.
"I can confirm that as part of the Vatican City State vaccination program to date, the first dose of the COVID-19 vaccine has been administered to Pope Francis and the Pope Emeritus," Bruni said in a statement Thursday.
Francis, who turned 84 last month and had part of a lung removed when he was younger, reportedly received the shot Wednesday while Benedict, 93, reportedly got it Thursday.
Vatican City, an independent enclave surrounded by Rome that serves as the headquarters of the Roman Catholic Church, launched the immunization campaign on Wednesday, administering doses of a COVID-19 vaccine developed by U.S. pharmaceutical giant Pfizer and its German partner BioNTech.
The tiny city-state has a population of only around 800 people but employs more than 4,000. It's unclear how many doses of the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine have been procured so far.
Vatican City citizens, along with employees and pensioners, will have the opportunity to receive the vaccine as well as family members who are entitled to use of the city-state's health care system. Priority is being given to health care workers, public safety personnel, the elderly and individuals who are most frequently in contact with the public, according to Bruni.
The vaccination campaign is voluntary and people under the age of 18 are being excluded for the time being, Bruni said.
Since the start of the pandemic, Vatican City has reported at least 27 confirmed cases of COVID-19, according to a real-time count kept by Johns Hopkins University.
ABC News' Phoebe Natanson contributed to this report.
A newly identified variant of the virus that causes COVID-19 may have emerged in the U.S. in May and could be one of the predominant versions circulating now, researchers at Southern Illinois University found.
Just because a new variant has emerged doesn't mean it's inherently dangerous, experts cautioned. It’s unknown if this new U.S. variant is more transmissible and deadly, but scientists say they are monitoring and continuing to study newly emerging viral variants. On Wednesday, researchers at Ohio State reported two newly identified ones. On Thursday, researchers at Southern Illinois University said they also identified a new variant, which is likely the same as the two identified in Ohio.
Now, researchers at Southern Illinois University are sharing even more details about this U.S. variant, which they are calling 20C-US. Origins of this variant can be traced to May 2020 from a sample in Texas, they said.
The 20C-US variant appears to be widespread in the Upper Midwest and comprises roughly 50% of the samples in the U.S., said Keith T. Gagnon, coauthor of the study and associate professor at Southern Illinois University.
"Let’s not get overly excited -- but be diligent," Gagon said. "Here it was, underneath our noses, for months."
“It doesn't look like it’s going to get in the way of vaccines," Gagnon added.
ABC News’ Sean Llewellyn, Eric Strauss and Sony Salzman contributed to this report.
