NEW YORK -- The total number of COVID-19 cases in the United States topped 26 million on Saturday, according to the Center for Systems Science and Engineering (CSSE) at Johns Hopkins University.

US COVID-19 case count rose to 26,012,880, with a total of 438,239 deaths, as of 2:22 pm local time (1922 GMT), according to the CSSE tally.

California reported the largest number of cases among the states, standing at 3,293,762. Texas confirmed 2,356,172 cases, followed by Florida with 1,713,589 cases, New York with 1,408,698 cases, and Illinois with more than 1.1 million cases.

Other states with over 600,000 cases include Georgia, Ohio, Pennsylvania, North Carolina, Arizona, Tennessee, New Jersey, Indiana and Michigan, the CSSE data showed.

The United States remains the nation worst hit by the pandemic, with the world's most cases and deaths, making up more than 25 percent of the global caseload and nearly 20 percent of the global deaths.

US COVID-19 cases reached 20 million on Jan 1, and have increased by 6 million within a month.

The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reported 437 cases caused by variants from more than 30 states as of Friday. The agency warned that the emerging variants may make the coronavirus cause more severe disease and spread more easily between humans.

The CDC also said on its website that some variants can spread and become predominant while others subside.