Samara Heisz/iStockBy ROSA SANCHEZ, EMILY SHAPIRO and IVAN PEREIRA, ABC News

(NEW YORK) — A pandemic of the novel coronavirus has now infected more than 78.4 million people worldwide and killed over 1.7 million of them, according to real-time data compiled by the Center for Systems Science and Engineering at Johns Hopkins University.

Here’s how the news is developing Thursday. All times Eastern:

Dec 24, 8:32 am
TSA sees busiest travel day of pandemic

The TSA screened 1,191,123 people at airport checkpoints nationwide on Wednesday, the highest single day total since the pandemic started, despite the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention advising Americans against traveling for the holidays.

More than 6.3 million passengers have been screened since Dec. 18.

Dec 24, 5:34 am
California surpasses two million cases

California now has more than two million confirmed cases of coronavirus since the start of the pandemic — the first state to report the grim milestone.

The state has at least 2,010,004 diagnosed cases and 23,651 deaths, according to data compiled by Johns Hopkins University.

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