The coronavirus has hit another sobering milestone: more than 50 million cases worldwide since the pandemic began. And the U.S. was on the brink of a grim milestone of its own – 10 million cases.
Johns Hopkins University's coronavirus tracker reported more than 50.4 million COVID-19 cases globally as of early Monday.
There have been more than 1.2 million deaths from the disease worldwide since the pandemic started.
The U.S., with about 4% of the world's population, represents almost a fifth of all reported cases.
The country has seen more than 237,000 deaths from the virus since the pandemic started, according to the university's data.
Coronavirus cases and deaths also continue to soar on a daily basis in the U.S., as they are in many countries.
The U.S. reported more than 126,000 new cases and more than 1,000 deaths from COVID-19 on Saturday, according to the university.
President-elect Joe Biden said in his victory speech Saturday night that he will announce a task force to lead his preparations to respond to the pandemic on Monday.
Biden said he would "name a group of leading scientists and experts as Transition Advisors to help take the Biden-Harris COVID plan and convert it into an action blueprint that starts on January 20th, 2021," he said. "That plan will be built on a bedrock of science. It will be constructed out of compassion, empathy, and concern. I will spare no effort — or commitment — to turn this pandemic around."
On "Face the Nation" Sunday, former Food and Drug Administration Commissioner Dr. Scott Gottlieb predicted Sunday that by the time Biden is inaugurated in January, the nation will be at the apex of the latest wave of the pandemic.
"The reality is that by the time the president-elect takes office, we'll probably be at the sort of apex, if you will, of what we're going through right now. ... I think as the president takes office, we'll be coming down the other side of the epidemic curve, hopefully. The only question is going to be how many people have died in the course of this and how many people have been infected, and we have to keep those numbers down as much as possible."
With more than 56,000 people hospitalized and 11,000 in the ICU, Gottlieb predicted the nation will see a record number of hospitalizations this week.