The worldwide number of fatalities from the novel coronavirus pandemic rose to 92,109 on Thursday.
More than 1,555,019 declared cases have been registered in 192 countries and territories. Of these cases, at least 345,834 are now considered recovered.
America’s coronavirus epicentre of New York recorded a new single-day high of 799 COVID-19 deaths on Thursday but Governor Andrew Cuomo said the rate of hospitalisations continued to fall. Cuomo said 799 people died in the last 24 hours, outdoing the previous high of 779 announced on Wednesday, but added that the curve was flattening because of social confinement measures.
“We had a 200-net increase in hospitalizations, which you can see is the lowest number we’ve had since this nightmare started,” Cuomo told reporters, adding that intensive care admissions were also at the lowest yet.
COVID-19 has killed more than 14,800 people in the United States, and the number of confirmed cases has grown to more than 432,000, according to a running tally by Johns Hopkins University.
New York is bearing the brunt of the United States’ deadly coronavirus pandemic, accounting for around half the number of deaths across the country.
Britain announced another 881 deaths of people testing positive for coronavirus in Thursday’s daily update, bringing the country’s total toll to 7,978. Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab, in charge as Prime Minister Boris Johnson remains in intensive care battling COVID-19, announced the figures as he warned that the country hadn’t “yet reached the peak of the virus”.
Meanwhile, British Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s health continues to improve on his fourth day in the intensive care unit (ICU) of a London hospital where he is being treated for the coronavirus, Downing Street said on Thursday. The 55-year-old was shifted to the ICU of St. Thomas’ Hospital in London on Monday night as his condition worsened over 10 days after he had tested positive for the coronavirus and went into self-isolation. He has since received “standard oxygen treatment” but has not been diagnosed with pneumonia or required a ventilator to aid his breathing.
The daily death toll from the coronavirus fell to 683 in Spain on Thursday, after rising for two days, with Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez urging people to keep up the fight against the spread of the COVID-19 virus. The country, one of the worst hit by the pandemic, has now recorded 15,238 coroanvirus deaths. The official daily toll was down from 757 on Wednesday. However, there has been growing speculation that the death toll may have grossly underestimated. Authorities in the Madrid region acknowledged on Wednesday that the number of deaths in retirement homes could be five times as high as that announced by health officials, who have not included almost 3,500 deaths of people who had not been tested for the virus.
The coronavirus pandemic could kill between 11,000 and 22,000 people in Canada, the Government projected on Thursday. It said the country could see between 934,000 and 1.9 million cases of COVID-19 by the time the pandemic ends, assuming Canadians observe strict social distancing and other safety measures over the next few months. These are the federal Government’s first projections on the pandemic’s possible toll in Canada. As of Thursday morning the virus had killed 476 people in Canada, according to figures provided by provincial authorities.
Iran’s Health Ministry on Thursday said 117 new deaths from the novel coronavirus took the total to 4,110 in one of the countries worst hit by the pandemic. But ministry spokesman Kianoush Jahanpour said the latest figures showed there was a downward trend in the number of new coronavirus infections. “Today we are clearly seeing a decline in the number of new cases,” Jahanpour said in a televised news conference. “We have identified 1,634 new cases, bringing the total number of confirmed cases to 66,220.”