ANKARA

The number of the coronavirus cases in the US has surpassed 8 million on Friday, while deaths near 218,000, according to Johns Hopkins University data.

The US still leads the world in the number of COVID-19 cases and deaths, followed by India and Brazil.

In India, more than 7.3 million people contracted the virus with a death toll over 112,000, and Brazil has close to 5.2 million cases with more than 152,000 deathts.

China is the birthplace of COVID-19 with almost 91,000 cases and 4,739 deaths. Turkey's overall case tally stood at 343,955 with 9,153 deaths as of Friday, according to Ministry of Health.

In the world, there are more than 39 million cases in total, while death toll has surpassed the 1.1 million mark on Friday.

There are more than 170 vaccines around the world that are candidates for COVID-19 and tracked by the World Health Organization (WHO), but none are approved for general use yet.

American pharmaceutical firm Pfizer said Friday it may know the effectiveness of its vaccine by the end of October, and it is planning to submit safety data on final dose of the vaccine to US' Food and Drug Administration in the third week of November.

The US' Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) said Wednesday a limited supply of COVID-19 vaccines could be available in the country before the end of 2020.

Two medical studies released Wednesday, from Denmark and Canada, suggested that people with blood type O may be at lower risk of contracting the novel coronavirus.