Global Covid-19 death toll passes one million

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Global Covid-19 death toll passes one million

The worldwide death toll from the coronavirus has passed one million, nine months into the crisis.

However, the true figure is thought to be larger owing to inadequate or inconsistent testing and reporting and suspected concealment by some countries.

UN Secretary-General António Guterres called it a "mind-numbing" figure and "an agonising milestone".

"Yet we must never lose sight of each and every individual life," he said in a video message.

"They were fathers and mothers, wives and husbands, brothers and sisters, friends and colleagues. The pain has been multiplied by the savageness of this disease."

The development comes nearly 10 months after news of the coronavirus began to emerge from Wuhan, China.

The pandemic has since spread to 188 countries with more than 32 million confirmed cases. Lockdowns and other measures to try to stop the virus spreading have thrown many economies into recession.

Meanwhile, efforts to develop an effective vaccine are continuing - although the World Health Organization (WHO) has warned that the death toll could hit two million before one is widely available.

The United-States have confirmed the most fatalities with 209,453 deaths since the beginning of the pandemic, followed by Brazil (141,776) and India (95,574).

The tally by Johns Hopkins University shows that deaths in the US, Brazil and India make up nearly half that total.

US President Donald Trump and Brazil's Jair Bolsonaro, dismissed the severity of the threat and the guidance of scientists, even as hospitals filled with gravely ill patients.

Gravest threats to public health, past and present.

The pandemic's toll of one million dead in such a limited time rivals some of the gravest threats to public health, past and present.

It exceeds annual deaths from Aids, which last year killed about 690,000 people worldwide.

The toll is approaching the 1.5 million global deaths each year from tuberculosis, which regularly kills more people than any other infectious disease.

Lawrence Gostin, a professor of global health law at Georgetown University, said: "Covid's grip on humanity is incomparably greater than the grip of other causes of death.

"We're only at the beginning of this. We're going to see many more weeks ahead of this pandemic than we've had behind us."