Global Coronavirus Death Toll Passes 1 Million

On Sunday, the global death toll from the latest coronavirus, which originated in China less than a year ago and has swept across the globe, passed one million.

The pandemic has destroyed the global economy, inflamed international tensions and upended lives, from the slums of India and the jungles of Brazil to New York, America's largest city, reports AFP.

As fans, viewers and visitors were forced to stay at home, held indoors by strict measures enforced to curb the spread of the virus, world sports, live entertainment and foreign travel ground to a halt.

Drastic controls that put half of humanity, more than four billion citizens, under some sort of lockdown by April initially slowed its rate, but cases have soared again after restrictions were eased.

According to an AFP count using official sources, on Sunday 2230 GMT, the disease had claimed 1,000,009 victims of 33,018,877 reported infections.

With more than 200,000 deaths, the United States has the highest death rate, followed by Brazil, India , Mexico and Britain.

For Italian truck driver Carlo Chiodi those grim figures include both his parents, who he says he lost within days of each other.

“What I have a hard time accepting is that I saw my father walking out of the house, getting into the ambulance, and all I could say to him was ‘goodbye’,” said Chiodi, 50.

“I regret not saying ‘I love you’ and I regret not hugging him. That still hurts me,” he told AFP.

Governments are again drawn into an uncomfortable balancing act with scientists already racing to find a working vaccine: virus controls delay the spread of the disease, but they damage economies and companies already reeling.

Earlier this year, the IMF cautioned that as the world's GDP collapsed, the economic upheaval could trigger a "crisis like no other."

Europe, hit hard by the first wave, is now facing another surge in cases, with Paris, London and Madrid all forced to introduce controls to slow cases threatening to overload hospitals.

Masks and social distances in stores, cafes and public transport in many cities are now part of daily life.

A record increase in cases in most regions was seen in mid-September, and the World Health Organization has cautioned that virus deaths could even double to two million without further collective global action.

“One million is a terrible number and we need to reflect on that before we start considering a second million,” the WHO’s emergencies director Michael Ryan told reporters on Friday.