Online Desk :
The overall number of Covid cases has now surpassed 488 million amid a rise in new infections in parts of the world.
According to Johns Hopkins University (JHU), the total case count mounted to 488,163,510 while the death toll from the virus reached 6,142,579 Friday morning.
The US has recorded 80,103, 665 cases so far and 980,624 people have died from the virus in the country, the university data shows.
India’s Covid-19 tally rose to 43,025,556 on Thursday, as 1,116 new cases were registered in 24 hours across the country, as per the federal health ministry’s data.
Besides, 52 new deaths from the pandemic took the total death toll to 521,211
Meanwhile, Brazil, which has been experiencing a new wave of cases since January last year, registered 29,947,895 infections as of Thursday, while its Covid death toll rose to 659,860.
The number of people killed by the coronavirus surged by more than 40% last week, likely due to changes in how Covid-19 deaths were reported across the Americas and by newly adjusted figures from India, according to a World Health Organization report released Wednesday.
In its latest weekly report on the pandemic, the UN health agency said the number of new coronavirus cases fell everywhere, including in WHO’s Western Pacific region, where they had been rising since December, reports AP.
About 10 million new Covid-19 infections and more than 45,000 deaths were reported worldwide over the past week, following a 23% drop in fatalities the week before.
WHO has said repeatedly that Covid-19 case counts are likely a vast underestimate of the coronavirus’ prevalence. The agency cautioned countries in recent weeks against dropping their comprehensive testing and other surveillance measures, saying that doing so would cripple efforts to accurately track the spread of the virus.
