The global death toll from the ongoing coronavirus outbreak is now over 20,000 as at Thursday, data from worldometers.info has shown.
Aside China, death figures from Italy, Spain, the U.S. and France topped the chart of countries with the highest deaths across the world as of Wednesday.
In Italy, 683 people died from the virus on Wednesday, Spain had 656 deaths, the U.S recorded 247 and France 231.
As at Thursday, 06:12GMT, the death toll from the Covid-19 outbreak across the world was 21,297.
Italy, which is the new epicentre for the disease, recorded over one third of the total deaths so far from the outbreak.
As at time of reporting, the total death toll from Italy stood at 7,503. This has more than doubled the death toll from China where the disease originated from. China has so far reported 3,287 deaths and new case cases have been on very low.
Meanwhile in Italy, cases are still soaring as the country’s medical facilities are burdened with the high number of cases.
As of Thursday, a total of 471,082 people have been infected with the virus with Nigeria recording 51 cases.
WHO Director-General, Tedros Ghebreyesus on Wednesday said more people would still die from the virus except prompt actions are taken. “How many more will be determined by the decisions we make and the actions we take now.”
Mr Ghebreyesus said many countries have introduced “unprecedented measures, at significant social and economic cost to combat the spread of the disease”.
He said countries should use aggressive measures to find, isolate, test, treat and trace people infected.
He said that all countries should expand, train and deploy their healthcare and public health workforce; implement a system to find every suspected case at community level and ramp up the production, capacity and availability of testing.
“Also countries need to identify, adapt and equip facilities they will use to treat and isolate patients,” he said.
“Develop a clear plan and process to quarantine contacts and refocus the whole of government on suppressing and controlling COVID-19.
“These measures are the best way to suppress and stop transmission, so that when restrictions are lifted, the virus doesn’t resurge,” he said.
