The coronavirus has infected over 71,000 people around the world.
The illness has spread to 29 countries and territories worldwide, and the latest count comes from data made available by each of the infected countries’ public health authorities, according to the Associated Press.
Mainland China remains, by far, the worst-hit area, reporting 70,548 cases. Most of the cases come from the Hubei province, where the city of Wuhan, the epicenter of the outbreak, is located. China has also reported 1,770 deaths from the virus.
The United States has reported 15 cases of the coronavirus, and an additional 14 Americans who tested positive for the illness landed in the U.S. over the weekend after being evacuated from a quarantined cruise ship.
One U.S. citizen who had visited China has died from the coronavirus. The U.S. State Department has evacuated hundreds of U.S. citizens from the Hubei province and announced on Feb. 8 that it had successfully flown roughly 800 U.S. citizens back from Wuhan.
Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, warned on Sunday that the coronavirus was approaching the threshold of becoming a “pandemic.”
“Technically speaking, the WHO [World Health Organization] wouldn’t be calling this a global pandemic. But it certainly is on the verge of that happening reasonably soon unless containment is more successful than it is right now,” Fauci told CBS News in an interview.
The spread of the virus in China has led to world governments scrutinizing the safety and health practices of the Chinese Communist Party, which runs China’s authoritarian government. Top Chinese officials have attempted to shift blame and downplay concerns that the government may not be able to contain the virus.
“Nothing short of the most comprehensive, rigorous, and thorough measures have been taken,” Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi said at an international security conference on Sunday. “China’s speed, scale, and efficiency all reflect the advantage of China’s system.”
Chinese President Xi Jinping has placed blame for the virus’s spread on local officials he believes should have acted quicker to quarantine it.
