News Desk :
Global cases of the novel coronavirus topped 7 million on Sunday, as case numbers surge in Brazil and India.
About 30% of those cases, or 2 million infections, are in the United States. Latin America has the second-largest outbreak with over 15% of cases, reports Reuters.
The worldwide death toll from Covid-19 passed 400,000 on Sunday.
India has 247,857 coronavirus cases, data from the Union Health Ministry showed on Sunday. The total cases in the country include 6,952 people who have died of the highly contagious infection, reports NDTV. India has become the sixth worst coronavirus-hit country in the world as its surpassed Italy on Saturday.
Fatalities in Brazil are rising rapidly and the country may overtake the United Kingdom to have the second-largest number of deaths in the world.
The United States is the worst-hit country with 113,000 deaths, followed by Britain with 40,465, Brazil with 36,044, Italy with 33,846, France with 29,111 and Spain with 27,135 fatalities. Brazil has removed from public view months of data on its Covid-19 epidemic, as President Jair Bolsonaro defended delays and changes to official record-keeping of the world’s second-largest outbreak.
The number of deaths linked to Covid-19 in just five months is now equal to the number of people who die annually from malaria, one of the world’s most deadly infectious diseases.
The first Covid-19 death was reported on January 10 in Wuhan, China but it was early April before the death toll passed 100,000, according to the Reuters tally of official reports from governments. It took 23 days to go from 300,000 to 400,000 deaths.
The total number of deaths is believed to be higher than the officially reported 402,000 as many countries lack supplies to test all victims and some countries do not count deaths outside of a hospital.
EU to reopen borders
In Europe, badly-hit countries slowly continued on a path toward a post-pandemic normal, also seeking to revive key tourist sectors in time for the summer, reports AFP.
The European Union said it could re-open borders to travellers from outside the region in early July, after some countries within the bloc re-opened to European visitors.
In France, the Palace of Versailles re-opened without the US and Chinese tourists that usually make up a third of its visitors.
The country also marked the anniversary of the 1944 D-Day landings with a fraction of the big crowds seen in previous years, owing to strict social distancing restrictions.
Elsewhere, the golf’s Asian Tour became the latest international body to announce plans for a restart, after the pandemic threw the world sports calendar into disarray.
