Coronavirus death toll hits 400,000 worldwide
CONCERN With 2,46,472 infections, India is now sixth worst-hit country, surpasses Italy
NEW DELHI: The coronavirus disease (Covid-19) pandemic has claimed 400,000 lives globally in the 148 days since it surfaced in the Chinese city of Wuhan and went on to ravage countries across the world that are now attempting to revive economies battered by the lockdowns imposed to curb the spread of the Sars-Cov-2 virus that causes the disease.
It took nearly four months for the death toll from the respiratory illness to reach the grim milestone of 100,000 deaths. As the virus spread from China – where it first originated late last year – to find a strong foothold in Europe, the number of fatalities doubled to 200,000 in another 15 days. The subsequent 100,000 deaths were added in 20 and 23 days, respectively, offering a glimmer of hope that many of the hot spots such as Spain, Italy, UK and France may have seen the worst. Although European countries have begun to reopen businesses and industries, Latin America, particularly Brazil, has emerged as the latest epicentre of the viral disease, according to the World Health Organization.
In the United States– the hardest-hit country with 1.97 million cases and 111,658 deaths -- the numbers have continued to mount even as the rate of the infection appears to be slowing down. Countries such as Mexico, Russia and India too are clocking thousands of daily new cases and hundreds more fatalities, driving part of the third wave of the pandemic after the first in China and the second in Europe and the US.
Till Saturday, 400,012 fatalities had been recorded from 6,916,826 cases world over.
At 246,472 cases, India on Saturday overtook Italy to become the country with the sixth-highest number of Covid-19 infections. However, with a death toll of 6,873 from the disease and a fatality rate of 2.8% till Saturday, it is significantly lower than the case fatality rate of other hard-hit nations such as the US (5.6%), UK (14.2%) and Italy (14.4%).
Experts say the number of deaths from the pandemic is a more accurate representation of the virus’ prevalence in a region instead of the number of infections, as a large percentage of Covid-19 cases are asymptomatic and are never officially reported.
“We know that the absolute number of deaths will go up with the increasing number of cases, but has there been a change in the proportion or case fatality rate?... And, if the case fatality rate is indeed going up, then that is a cause of concern,” Dr Jugal Kishore, head of department of community medicine at Safdarjung hospital, had told HT.