Coronavirus: Global Death Toll Surpasses 200,000

According to recent figures from Johns Hopkins University, more than 200,000 people worldwide have now died with the coronavirus.

There are more than 2.8 million confirmed cases of Covid-19, the tally shows.

It comes after the US death toll passed 50,000, as Americans endure the world’s deadliest outbreak.

Chinese state media reported the first known death linked to the virus on January 11. More than 210 countries and territories have since reported cases.

Five countries have now reported death tolls above 20,000 although the way fatalities are counted varies widely.

The US, Spain and Italy have seen the highest number of reported fatalities.

France, which does include deaths in care homes in its statistics, said its toll had risen by 369 on April 25.

There have been 22,614 virus deaths in France since the start of March, but health officials say the mortality rate in hospitals is falling, and the number of people in intensive care has dropped for the seventeenth consecutive day.

The World Health Organization (WHO) says patients who have recovered from the virus may not be protected against re-infection.

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Earlier this week, WHO Director General Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus highlighted upward trends in Covid-19 cases in Africa, Eastern Europe, Central America and South America.

Dr Tedros said that while most of the epidemics in Western Europe appeared to be stable or in decline, for many countries the disease was just getting started.

He said: “And some (countries) that were affected early in the pandemic are now starting to see a resurgence in cases.”

One such country is Singapore, which was initially praised for its success in containing the virus, but has since seen a surge of infections linked to industrial worksites and tightly packed worker dormitories.

Elsewhere in Asia, Chinese authorities reported no new deaths for the tenth consecutive day on April 25, and South Korea had its second day without a death.

Statisticians have cautioned that a reported death toll may not always give the full picture of a country’s epidemic.

The US has seen the most coronavirus deaths of any individual country, for example, but also has a far larger population than most.

With 330 million people, the US population exceeds the total number of people living in the five largest countries in Western Europe – the UK, Germany, France, Italy and Spain.

Many European countries have reported more deaths per head of population than the US, and Europe as a whole has reported more deaths overall.

Death rates also depend on who is counted. Some countries are including deaths in care homes in their data, giving a fuller picture, whereas others only count deaths in hospital where Covid-19 has been confirmed.