Covid death toll worldwide passes one million

Covid death toll compiled by John Hopkins University shows that the number of Covid deaths has now passed one million worldwide.

For nine months now the world has been battling Covid and the death toll for the virus has now passed one million worldwide. The death toll was compiled by John Hopkins University and the true figure is expected to be much larger due to inadequate or inconsistent testing and reporting and suspected concealment by some countries.

Covid death toll worldwide

The death toll is still growing with almost 5,000 more deaths reported every day.

Parts of Europe currently experiencing a second wave and experts fear that the same will occur in the US. Covid deaths in the US currently account for a fifth of those worldwide, in other words, about 205,000 deaths.

In Wuhan, the Chinese city in which the virus originated, the authorities only locked down the city two weeks after the initial outbreak, by which time millions had already travelled to several countries.

China’s government has been heavily criticized for not alerting other countries to the threat. In spite of that, countries such as Germany, South Korea and New Zealand worked effectively to contain the virus.

The same cannot be said for US President Donald Trump and Brazil’s Jair Bolsonaro who played down the threat and the guidance of scientists, even when the hospitals were filled with patients suffering from Covid. Brazil is second on the list for the most Covid related deaths after the US, with about 142,000.

Covid resembles one of the greatest threats to public health ever, with the death toll exceeding annual deaths from AIDS, which last year killed about 690,000 people globally. The toll is closing the gap on the 1.5 million global deaths each year from tuberculosis.

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