NEW YORK - The total number of COVID-19 cases in the United States topped 14 million on Thursday, according to the Center for Systems Science and Engineering (CSSE) at Johns Hopkins University.

US COVID-19 case count rose to 14,012,378, with a total of 274,648 deaths, as of 2:26 p.m. local time (1926 GMT), according to the CSSE tally.

California recently replaced Texas to become the state with the most cases, standing at 1,271,722. Texas reported 1,270,537 cases, the second largest number among the states. Florida registered 1,018,160 cases, being the third US state to have more than 1 million cases. Illinois recorded 759,562 cases, followed by New York with 664,238 cases.

Other states with over 380,000 cases include Georgia, Ohio, Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Tennessee, the CSSE data showed.

By far, the United States remains the nation worst hit by the pandemic, with the world's most cases and deaths, making up more than 21 percent of the global caseload.

US COVID-19 cases hit 10 million on Nov. 9, and have since then increased by 1 million every six days on average.

US daily cases reached 200,070 on Wednesday, the second highest single-day increase in new cases across the United States since the pandemic began, the CSSE data showed.

Wednesday also marked the 30th consecutive day that the US daily cases skyrocketed above 100,000 since the beginning of November.

Meanwhile, a total of 2,804 deaths associated with COVID-19 were confirmed on Wednesday in the United States, the highest death toll in a single day the country has ever seen since the onset of the pandemic, according to the CSSE chart.

In addition, current hospitalizations in the United States soared to 100,226 on Wednesday, also setting a new record, according to The COVID Tracking Project.

A national ensemble forecast published on Thursday by the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention predicted that a total of 303,000 to 329,000 COVID-19 deaths will be reported in the United States by Dec. 26.