Medical staff transport a patient on a stretcher to a waiting medical flight, to be evacuated to another hospital, at the Bron airport near Lyon, southeastern France, on November 16, 2020, amid the outbreak of the Covid-19 caused by the new Coronavirus. (File photo: AFP)

NEW YORK, Nov. 17 (Xinhua) -- Global COVID-19 cases topped 55 million on Tuesday, according to the Center for Systems Science and Engineering at Johns Hopkins University.