California on Tuesday became the second U.S. state after New York to report more than 400,000 COVID-19 cases, according to a Reuters tally of county data.
The most populous U.S. state has totaled 400,166 COVID-19 cases, putting it on the verge of surpassing New York - the original epicenter of the nation's outbreak - for the highest number of infections in the country since the novel coronavirus was first detected here in January.
At that point, if California were a country, it would rank fifth in the world for total COVID-19 cases behind only the United States, Brazil, India and Russia. New York currently has over 412,800 total cases and is adding on average 700 new cases a day in July while California is rising by an average of 8,300 cases a day.