Global coronavirus death toll passes one million

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

The toll, compiled by Johns Hopkins University, reached the grim seven-figure milestone in the early hours of Tuesday.

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

The death toll continues to grow, with nearly 5,000 more deaths reported each day.

Parts of Europe are getting hit by a second wave, and experts fear the same fate may await the US, which accounts for about 205,000 deaths, or a fifth of those worldwide.

The virus first appeared in late 2019 in patients being cared for in the Chinese city of Wuhan, where the first death was reported on January 11.

By the time authorities locked down the city nearly two weeks later, millions of travellers had come and gone and China's government has come in for criticism that it did not do enough to alert other countries to the threat.

Government leaders in countries like Germany, South Korea and New Zealand worked effectively to contain it.

Others, like 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.

Brazil has recorded the second most deaths after the US, with about 142,000. India is third and Mexico fourth, with more than 76,000.

The virus has forced trade-offs between safety and economic well-being and the choices made have left millions of people vulnerable, especially the poor, minorities and the elderly.

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."

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