Global Covid-19 Death Toll Hits One Million

The actual death toll may exceed the reported fatalities, and will likely hit 2 million before a vaccine is available, according to WHO.

KUALA LUMPUR, Sept 29 — The world has seen more than one million Covid-19 fatalities in less than one year since the disease emerged in Wuhan, China last year.

Based on the statistics from Johns Hopkins University, Al-Jazeera reported that the death toll has reached 1,000,555 people across the world.

However, the World Health Organization (WHO) stated that the actual Covid-19 casualties may be more than the reported cases.

“If anything, the numbers currently reported probably represent an underestimate of those individuals who have either contracted Covid-19 or died as a cause of it,” Mike Ryan, the WHO’s top emergencies expert, was quoted saying in a briefing yesterday at Geneva.

“When you count anything, you can’t count it perfectly but I can assure you that the current numbers are likely an underestimate of the true toll of Covid,” he said.

Of the total death toll, 50 per cent of incidents occurred in the United States, Brazil and India.

BBC listed the US, Brazil, India, Mexico, the United Kingdom, and Italy as the main hotspot areas for Covid-19 deaths.

So far, 33.3 million Covid-19 cases have been recorded worldwide, with 7.16 million cases in the US, 6.07 million in India, and 4.75 million in Brazil.

Of that, the US registered more than 205,000 deaths, whereas more than 142,000 deaths occured in Brazil. India recorded more than 96,000 deaths so far.

It is to be noted that WHO has estimated two million deaths from coronavirus before an effective vaccine is available worldwide.

According to the Centre for Strategic and International Studies, the Philippines recorded the most number of Covid-19 cases in Southeast Asia with 307,288 cases, followed by Indonesia (278,722 cases), Singapore (57,715 cases), and Malaysia (11,034 cases).

Malaysia is in the fourth place for Covid-19 deaths in the region with 134 deaths, behind Indonesia (10,473 deaths), the Philippines (5,381 deaths), and Myanmar (256 deaths).

“The public health care system in Myanmar is so bad that if this second wave keeps going the system will be completely overwhelmed, not only in Yangon but out in the countryside where the capacity to respond is a lot more challenging,” David Mathieson, an independent researcher and expert on Myanmar was quoted saying.

So far, Cambodia and Laos did not record any Covid-19 death case.

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