GENEVA -- The number of confirmed COVID-19 cases worldwide has surpassed 50 million, Monday's figures from the World Health Organization (WHO) showed.

A WHO dashboard showed that globally, as of 10:45 am CET (0945 GMT) on Monday, a total of 50,030,121 confirmed cases of COVID-19, including 1,252,072 deaths, had been reported to the UN health agency.

The pace of the COVID-19 pandemic continued to pick up. It took just 20 days for the WHO tally to go from 40 million global cases -- reported on Oct 20 -- to 50 million.

Monday's figures showed that the US remains at the top in both confirmed cases and deaths, reporting 9,763,730 COVID-19 cases and 235,562 deaths, followed by India and Brazil which have reported 8,553,657 and 5,653,561 confirmed cases respectively, including 126,611 and 162,269 deaths from each country.

Following the top three in confirmed cases are Russia with 1,774,334 cases, France with 1,714,361 cases, Spain with 1,328,832 cases, Argentina with 1,236,851 cases, Britain with 1,171,445 cases, Colombia with 1,136,447 cases, and Mexico with 961,938 cases.

On the list of death tolls, following the top three are Mexico with 94,808 cases, Britain with 48,888 cases, Italy with 41,063 cases, France with 39,849 cases, Spain with 38,833 cases, Iran with 38,291 cases, and Peru with 34,840 cases.

According to WHO regional offices, Americas remain the most affected area by COVID-19, with a total of 21,730,622 confirmed cases and 659,080 death cases, followed by Europe where 13,135,548 confirmed cases and 311,336 death cases have been reported.

As the world is struggling to contain the pandemic, countries including Germany, France, China, Russia, the United Kingdom and the United States are racing to find a vaccine.

According to the website of the WHO, as of Nov 3, there were 202 COVID-19 candidate vaccines being developed worldwide, and 47 of them were in clinical trials.