Global coronavirus cases surpassed five million on Wednesday, with Latin America overtaking the United States and Europe in the past week to report the largest portion of new daily cases globally, Reuters reported.
It represents a new phase in the spread of the virus, which initially peaked in China in February, before large-scale outbreaks followed in Europe and the United States.
Latin America accounted for around a third of the 91,000 cases reported earlier this week. Europe and the United States each accounted for just over 20%, according to the Reuters report.
A large number of those new cases came from Brazil, which recently surpassed Germany, France and the United Kingdom to become the third-largest outbreak in the world, behind the United States and Russia.
Cases in Brazil are now rising at a daily pace second only to the United States.
At more than five million cases, the virus has infected more people in under six months than the annual total of severe flu cases, which the World Health Organization estimates is around three million to five million globally.
The pandemic has claimed over 326,000 lives, though the true number is thought to be higher as testing is still limited and many countries do not include fatalities outside of hospitals.
Earlier on Wednesday, World Health Organization (WHO) director-general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus told a news conference, “We still have a long way to go in this pandemic. We are very concerned about rising cases in low and middle income countries.”