The deadly Covid-19 across the world has now infected more than 29 million people and the numbers are expected to pass 30 million, with 9.39 lakh people succumbing to the virus that was first reported in late December 2019.

According to Johns Hopkins University, the world has witnessed a total of 29,760,579 confirmed coronavirus cases.

The death count has also surged to 939,427.

Meanwhile, India on Wednesday became only the second country in the world, after the United States, to record more than 5 million cases.

The south Asian nation, the world’s second-most populous country, has been reporting more new daily cases than the United States since mid-August and accounts for just over 16% of globally known cases.

The United States has about 20% of all global cases, although it has just 4% of the world’s population. Brazil, the third worst-hit country, accounts for roughly 15% of global cases.

It took 18 days for global cases to surge from 25 million to more than 30 million. It took 20 days for the world to go from 20 million to 25 million and 19 days to go from 15 million to 20 million.

The global rate of new daily cases is slowing, reflecting progress in constraining the disease in many countries, despite a few big surges.

Health experts stress that official data almost certainly under-reports both infections and deaths, particularly in countries with limited testing capacity.

The race to develop and bring to market a novel coronavirus vaccine has grown increasingly frenetic in recent weeks with about 200 candidates in development globally.

U.S. President Donald Trump has said his country could have a vaccine ready for distribution before the U.S. election on Nov. 3, while a Chinese health official this week said China may have a vaccine ready for public use as early as November.

While the trajectory of the coronavirus still falls far short of the 1918 Spanish flu, which infected an estimated 500 million people, killing at least 10% of them, experts worry the available data is underplaying the true impact of the pandemic.

(With inputs from agencies)