Britain reports more than 40,000 deaths from coronavirus infection (File)
Paris:
The coronavirus pandemic has killed 4,000,000 people since its onset in China late last year, according to an AFP count of official sources at 2:30 p.m. GMT Sunday.
A total of 400,052 deaths have been recorded – a figure that has doubled in the past month and a half.
While almost half of the deaths have been recorded in Europe (183,428), the United States remains the nation hardest hit with 109,802 deaths out of 1,920,061 cases.
Great Britain then comes with 40,542 deaths, followed by Brazil (35,930), Italy (33,846) and France (29,142).
The sharp increase in deaths and cases in Brazil has made Latin America the current focus of the virus.
But controversy surrounds the country’s data after the health ministry slaughtered total infections and deaths on Friday, later replacing it with figures for the previous 24 hours.
Regional health officials have accused the government of far-right president Jair Bolsonaro of “making the victims of the disease invisible”.
“From a health standpoint, we are witnessing a tragedy … not informing means that the state is more dangerous than the virus,” said Luiz Henrique Mandetta, sacked as health minister by Bolsonaro in April.
Bolsonaro said throughout the crisis that the danger of the virus was exaggerated, stressing that his priority was to keep the economy running, despite last month, the World Health Organization had declared that Latin America had become the epicenter of the virus.
(With the exception of the title, this story was not edited by GalacticGaming staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)
