The number of COVID-19 cases in the United States topped 16 million on Saturday, according to the Center for Systems Science and Engineering (CSSE) at Johns Hopkins University.

US COVID-19 caseload rose to 16,014,839, with 297,501 deaths, as of 2126 GMT, according to the CSSE tally.

California reported the most cases among the states, standing at 1,535,962. Texas registered 1,395,889 cases, followed by Florida with 1,116,973 cases. Illinois recorded 841,688 cases and New York identified 764,966 cases.

Other states with over 420,000 cases include Ohio, Georgia, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Michigan, Tennessee and North Carolina, the CSSE data showed.

By far, the US remains the nation worst-hit by the pandemic, with the world’s most cases and deaths, making up more than 22 percent of the global caseload.

US COVID-19 cases hit 10 million on Nov 9, and increased by 5 million within a month. It took only four days for the case count to jump from 15 million to 16 million.

Record numbers of cases, deaths as well as hospitalisations have been repeatedly seen across the states in December.

The daily cases in the US reached 231,775 on Friday, the highest single-day increase in new cases the country has ever witnessed since the pandemic began, according to data compiled by Johns Hopkins University.

Friday also marked the 40th consecutive day that the US had reported more than 100,000 daily cases since the beginning of November.

Meanwhile, the country just went through the deadliest day since the onset of the pandemic, with the national daily deaths surging to 3,309 on Friday, the CSSE chart showed.

Current hospitalisations in the US skyrocketed to an all-time high of 108,108 on Friday, according to The COVID Tracking Project.

An updated model forecast by the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation at the University of Washington projected a total of 502,256 COVID-19 deaths in the United States by April 1, 2021, based on current projection scenario.

Meanwhile, states in the US will start receiving the first batch of the nation’s first COVID-19 vaccine from Monday morning, US officials said Saturday, after the government gave the final nod to the shots required to end the outbreak that has killed nearly 300,000 Americans.