Washington, Sept 29(UNI) The death toll due to the COVID-19 pandemic across the world crossed the one million mark, according to data released by John Hopkins University on Tuesday, even as several countries are seeing a second wave of the pandemic, with surging cases.
According to reports the death toll is the highest in the US, Brazil and India, the top three worst affected countries in the world, who together account for nearly half of the total number of COVID deaths, a BBC report said.
However, experts are warning that the real figures of both the number of cases and death could be much higher, than has been reported, owing largely to the differences in the way cases are reported, how sporadically tests are done and how deaths are recorded.
This grim milestone was crossed nearly 10 months after news of the coronavirus first broke out in Wuhan in China.
UN Secretary-General António Guterres called it a “mind-numbing” figure and “an agonising milestone”.
Since the pandemic began it has spread to nearly 188 countries with more than 32 million confirmed cases. In the absence of a readily available vaccine governments around the world have resorted to lockdowns and other measures of physical distancing to try to stop the spread of the virus, but that has thrown the world economy into a recession.
Several countries are trying to develop a vaccine to tackle the pandemic, but experts say that is still months, maybe even years away and the World Health Organisation (WHO) has warned that the death toll could more than double by the time an effective vaccine does become available.
The US has the world’s highest COVID death toll with about 205,000 fatalities followed by Brazil with 141,700 and India with 95,500 deaths.
Worldwide the US has recorded the highest number of cases, more than seven million, which is more than a fifth of the world’s total.
Brazil leads the tally in Latin America, with more than 4.7 million cases, the third highest in the world.
Elsewhere in the region, newly confirmed infections are also rising quickly in Argentina, which now has more than 700,000 cases.
