World hits milestone in Covid-19 total infections and deaths

The world has hit a new milestone with 500,000+ deaths and 10 million confirmed cases of Covid-19 with officials warning the worst may be yet to come. Meanwhile more than 5.5 million people have recovered from the virus. The statistics surged through the milestones yesterday, coupled with another record mark for daily new infections at 189,000.

The true death toll of the virus, which first appeared in China late last year, is generally believed to be significantly higher. Experts claim that many victims died of Covid-19 without being checked for it, particularly early on.

The US has claimed around 25% of the confirmed Covid-19 deaths and reported infections worldwide, with Brazil having the highest death rate in the world. South Africa’s health minister warned that the country’s current number of cases is expected to increase rapidly in the coming weeks as people go back to work and strain hospitals to the limit.

Recent clusters of cases in the Swiss nightclub and the English town of Leicester, as well as Tokyo and Seoul, have shown that the virus continues to spread widely in Europe, but not at the fast-growing pace of infections seen in parts of the western and southern states in the US, Latin America and India.

The British government, meanwhile, is debating whether a local lockdown is required for the central English city of Leicester in the midst of rumours of a Covid-19 increase in its Asian population. It would be the first local lockdown in Britain.

On Sunday, Italy commemorated its dead with a Requiem concert in the hard-hit province of Bergamo. The ceremony at the one-time epicentre of the European outbreak took place one day after Italy reported the lowest daily count of Covid-19 deaths in over 4 months.

Germany has renewed lockdowns in its western region after around 1,000 slaughterhouse workers tested positive.

Africa’s reported cases of Covid-19 continued to grow to a new high of more than 371,000, including 9,484 deaths, according to statistics published by the African Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on Sunday.

China has also announced a further decrease in new confirmed cases today, with a total of just 12, including seven cases of domestic transmission in Beijing, where almost 8.3 million people have been screened in recent weeks. No new deaths were reported today, leaving the total at 4,634 of the 83,512 confirmed cases of Covid-19.

In the meantime, Poland and France have sought to make a move towards normalcy by holding elections that have been postponed by the virus.

SOURCE: AP News