Global coronavirus infections surpassed 2.5 million on Tuesday, according to a Reuters tally, with US cases surpassing 800,000.
The figure includes more than 170,000 deaths, two-thirds of which have been reported in Europe.
A nurse wipes away tears as she stands outside NYU Langone Medical Center on 1st Avenue in Manhattan as New York Police Department mounted police and other units came to cheer and thank healthcare workers at 7pm during the outbreak of the coronavirus disease in New York City, New York, US, on 16th April. PICTURE: Reuters/Mike Segar
It took around 75 days for the first 500,000 cases to be reported, and just six days for the most recent half million to be registered.
The first 41 cases were confirmed on 10th January, just over three months ago, and new cases have accelerated to over 70,000 a day in April.
It compares to three million to five million cases of severe illness caused annually by seasonal influenza, according to World Health Organisation estimates.
While experts say actual cases of the new coronavirus are likely higher than current reports, the number still falls far short of the Spanish flu, which began in 1918 and infected an estimated 500 million people.
Despite the growing number of cases in the current pandemic, there are signs that the spread of the coronavirus is slowing with many countries exercising lockdown measures.
At the beginning of April, the total case figure grew at a rate of eight to nine per cent per day and this has since slowed to between three to four per cent per day in the past week.
More than 1.1 million cases have been reported in Europe, including almost 400,000 cases in Italy and Spain, where over 10 per cent of reported cases have been fatal.
North America accounts for a third of all cases, though so far the region has reported lower death rates. In both the United States and Canada, five per cent of reported cases have been fatal.
Cases in Latin America continue to grow faster than other regions, and topped 100,000 in the past 24 hours.
In China, where the virus is thought to have originated, daily new cases have dwindled to less than 20 a day over the past three days and no new deaths have been reported this week.
However, last week China raised its official death toll by 40 per cent, adding another 1,290 fatalities which health authorities said were not reported earlier.
Currently, many countries continue to experience a shortage of testing resources, artificially lowering case numbers and excluding infections in nursing homes.
CORONAVIRUS LATEST
AMERICAS
• US congressional leaders and the White House agreed on nearly $US500 billion more in coronavirus relief for the economy.
• President Donald Trump pledged to suspend immigration into the country, while Georgia and other US states began lifting restrictions that stalled their economies.
• Missouri became the first US state to sue the Chinese Government over its handling of the coronavirus.
• The economies of Latin America and the Caribbean will contract by a record 5.3 per cent in 2020 as the coronavirus outbreak ravages the region, a United Nations agency said.
• Mexico has entered what the government calls “Phase 3” of the spread of the coronavirus, the most serious stage, Deputy Health Minister Hugo Lopez-Gatell said.
• Police in Chile broke up a fresh round of anti-government protests in one of Santiago’s central squares late on Monday, arresting 14 and citing rules against congregations intended to ward off the spread of the coronavirus.
EUROPE
• The true extent of the death toll in Britain was more than 40 per cent higher than the daily figures from the government indicated by 10th April, according to data that includes deaths in the community.
• Crowds of youths targeted riot police with fireworks and torched rubbish bins in a third night of unrest on the outskirts of Paris where a heavy police presence to enforce the coronavirus lockdown has exacerbated tensions.
• Italy is likely to start easing its coronavirus lockdown from 4th May though the long-awaited rollback will be cautious and calculated, Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte said.
• Spain’s cabinet approved measures to support workers and businesses struggling under stringent coronavirus restrictions as officials cheered a slowing infection rate.
ASIA-PACIFIC
• The WHO said that all available evidence suggests the novel coronavirus originated in bats in China late last year and it was not manipulated or constructed in a laboratory.
• About 500 people entered self-isolation at the Presidential House in the Indian capital after a worker’s relative tested positive, officials said.
• Thailand approved a second automatic visa extension for foreigners to prevent long queues at immigration centres.
• Indonesia will ban the mass exodus tradition, locally known as ‘mudik’, at the end of the Muslim fasting month in May.
• A north-western province on the frontline of China’s coronavirus battle reported its first cases in nearly three weeks, all involving travellers from overseas.
• Taiwan’s defence minister apologised and said he was willing to resign after a coronavirus outbreak on a navy ship which visited the Pacific last month just as the country celebrated a huge drop in cases.
MIDDLE EAST AND AFRICA
• Millions of children in the Middle East will become poorer as their caregivers lose jobs from lockdowns, according to the UN Children’s Fund.
• The coronavirus crisis is stirring anti-Semitism around the world, fuelled by centuries-old lies that Jews are spreading infection, researchers in Israel said.
• South Africa’s President Cyril Ramaphosa announced a 500 billion rand rescue package, equivalent to 10 per cent of the GDP of Africa’s most industrialised nation, to try to cushion the economic blow of the coronavirus pandemic.
• The palm oil market is set to miss out on a key high-demand period in 2020 as coronavirus-driven lockdowns during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan dent demand in key importing countries such as India, Pakistan and Bangladesh.
ECONOMIC FALLOUT
• Stock markets around the world fell on Tuesday, as oil prices kept sliding a day after May US crude oil futures turned negative for the first time, underscoring the depth of economic damage from the coronavirus pandemic.
• US home sales dropped by the most in nearly four-and-a-half years in March as extraordinary measures to control the spread of the coronavirus brought buyer traffic to a virtual standstill.
• The Irish economy will shrink by at least 10 per cent this year and could shrink more than 15 per cent if a second wave of coronavirus forces restrictions on movement to last six months longer than expected, the government said.
• The number of people facing acute food insecurity could nearly double this year to 265 million due to the economic fallout of COVID-19, the United Nations’ World Food Programme said.
• If prolonged, the pandemic could trigger a negative feedback loop in which a worsening economy threatens to destabilise Japan’s financial system, the Bank of Japan warned on Tuesday.
• Black and Hispanic families in the US are taking the biggest income hit due to the coronavirus pandemic, and they are less prepared to withstand the blow, according to two studies.
– Compiled by SARAH MORLAND, ADITYA SONI, DEVIKA SYAMNATH, RAMAKRISHNAN M and UTTARESH V
