Paris: The novel coronavirus has killed more than 1,20,000 people worldwide, nearly 70 per cent of them in Europe, according to a tally compiled Tuesday by this agency from official sources. A total of 120,013 deaths have now been recorded since the epidemic first emerged in China in December, 81,474 of them in Europe.
Meanwhile Iran said Tuesday that the number of lives lost in the country to coronavirus dropped to double figures for the first time in one month.
Iran Health Ministry spokesman Kianoush Jahanpour said in Tehran that 98 deaths from the COVID-19 disease were recorded in the past 24 hours, bringing the overall toll to 4,683.
“Unfortunately, we lost 98 of our compatriots infected with the disease… but after a month of waiting, this is the first day that the death toll has been in double figures,” Jahanpour told a televised news conference. “We hope that this path will continue with your ongoing cooperation” in observing health guidelines aimed at stopping the spread of the virus, he added.
Jahanpour said another 1,574 people were found to have been infected with the virus. That took the overall number of infections in Iran’s outbreak to 74,877, Jahanpour said and added that 48,129 of those hospitalised had recovered and been discharged.
There was no such relief for Spain as the death toll in the country went past the 18,000-mark Tuesday. Spanish health ministry officials said that there were 567 new deaths in the last 24 hours taking the overall toll to 18,056. However, the number of new infections rose by just over 3,045, or 1.8 percent, to 172,451, the smallest increase since the country of around 47 million people imposed a nationwide lockdown March 14 to curb the spread of the virus.
Health authorities said Spain has overcome the peak of the coronavirus, after registering its highest death toll of 950 people on April 2.
“The trend is good, in line with what we have seen in recent weeks,” the health ministry’s emergencies coordinator, Fernando Simon, told a press conference in Madrid to discuss the latest coronavirus figures.
Spain tightened its lockdown on March 30 by freezing all non-essential activities like construction and manufacturing for two weeks – a measure that was lifted on Monday despite warnings from some quarters that removing it too soon could trigger a fresh outbreak.
AFP