COVID-19 infections growing, deaths near 50,000: WHO

"In the past 5 weeks there has been a near exponential growth in the number of new cases and the number of deaths has more than doubled in past week," Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, WHO director-general, told a virtual news conference in Geneva.

"In the next few days we will reach 1 million confirmed cases and 50,000 deaths worldwide," Tedros said.