The United States of America has now recorded to have the highest number of confirmed COVID-19 cases in the world. This is according to new data gathered by John Hopkins University and The New York Times.

This occurred on Thursday, where cases shot up from the reported cases from the Centre for Disease Control and prevention, which had reported 68,440 cases on Thursday evening.

John Hopkins reported that the US has 82,404 cases, while the Times reported at least 81,321 people who had tested positive for COVID-19.

They have also reportedly surpassed virus hotspots China and Italy, where there are 81,285 cases in China and 80,539 in Italy, according to an AFP tally.

According to John Hopkins, at least 1,178 people have died of the Coronavirus in the U.S. including 100 in virus hotspot New York. CNN also reported a total of 1,195 in the U.S after 246 new deaths on Thursday. So the actualy numbers of cases and deaths could vary, but are on the rise.

But considering that this is a rapidly spreading disease, and that American hospitals are overwhelmed with the amount of COVID-19 cases so far, the number could be larger. Experts say that the new infection numbers could be much higher than the official figure, as there is a shortage of test kits.

There have been over 510,000 cases worldwide, and as the number of infected are increasing, the total and rank order of countries could change at anytime.