The number of COVID-19 deaths exceeded one million across the globe on September 28, 2020, according to a tally of cases maintained by Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore.
This comes about nine months since the first death linked to the virus was reported on January in China.
According to Johns Hopkins University, which has been tracking the spread of the virus that originated in the central Chinese city of Wuhan, the global cases have reached 33,378,462 and worldwide death toll has hit 1,002,129. Fortunately over 23 million people have recovered from the virus.
The virus has claimed the largest number of deaths in the U.S, which accounts for over 20% of the worldwide COVID-19 fatalities with over 205,000 deaths.
The US is followed by Brazil with over 142,000 deaths and India is the third most hit globally with over 96,000 deaths.
China, where the pandemic started has reported about 91,000 confirmed cases of COVID-19 and 4,739 deaths.
The data shows no sign the global death rate is slowing and infections is on the rise again in countries that were thought to be controlling their outbreaks months ago.
The one millionth deaths from the novel coronavirus comes as pharmaceutical companies around the globe are racing to develop a proven and safe vaccine against the virus.
With continents like America and Europe worst hit by the coronavirus, Africa has just recorded 1,465,023 confirmed cases with a death toll of 35,750 and 1,210,548 recoveries.
The COVID-19 death rates in Africa have been low with high share of recoveries despite earlier warnings from experts that the virus would overrun weak health systems in most countries and kill millions.
The continent has the second lowest number of coronavirus infected people dying from COVID-19 of six world’s regions, according to data from Johns Hopkins University.
Oceania leads with a confirmed case-death rate of 1.6 per cent, followed by Africa and Asia (two per cent each), South America (three per cent each), North America (four per cent) while Europe has the highest rate (six per cent).
Though many experts are wary of the statistics from African countries, observing that low testing rates and poor data reporting and death registration might prevent knowing the true extent of the disease in Africa.
