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Coronavirus pandemic: All stories
World

Coronavirus: 28 million infected, more than 900,000 dead – the pandemic, six months on

  • Back in March the death toll stood at 4,200 from 120,00 cases. Now around 260,000 new cases and 5,500 deaths are being reported globally every day
  • Latin America remains the worst-hit region, with more than 300,000 deaths and 8 million infections. The US is the worst affected country

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Volunteers dig a grave for a Covid-19 victim at a cemetery in Pune, India on Monday. Photo: AFP
Agence France-Presse
Six months since the World Health Organisation announced that the outbreak of novel coronavirus had become a pandemic, Covid-19 has cost the lives of more than 900,000 people.

Back in March the death toll stood at 4,200 from 120,000 cases, with most of the fatalities in and around the Chinese city of Wuhan, where the first virus cases were reported in December.

Those figures were enough to cause concern back then. But now, upwards of 28 million people have been infected worldwide, while the death toll heads inexorably towards a million.

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When the WHO declared the pandemic on March 11, Covid-19 had already spread to five continents, though more than two-thirds of known cases had been registered in Asia.

03:07

Wuhan pool party shows China's ‘strategic victory’ over Covid-19, Beijing says

Wuhan pool party shows China's ‘strategic victory’ over Covid-19, Beijing says
Though the virus was first detected in Wuhan, Europe quickly became the new hotspot. In the second half of March more than 80 per cent of new cases worldwide were detected there.
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