Covid-19: Global death toll surges past 80,000

The novel coronavirus death toll across the world crossed 80,000 on Wednesday, according to the data released Johns Hopkins University's Coronavirus Resource Centre.

A total of 82,145 people have died so far, with 1,431,375 infections recorded globally. Besides, 301,385 people diagnosed with the virus around the world have recovered so far.

Italy, Spain, UK and France continue to be the countries facing the most fatalities, while the US has the largest number of positive cases with more than 383,000. Spain, Italy and France follow the US in the number of cases, with over 140,000, 135,000 and 110,00, respectively.

Death toll in Italy is 17,127, in Spain 13,897, in the US 12,021, and 10,343 in France.

Many countries have restricted travel from the most affected areas and implemented lockdowns as the World Health Organization (WHO) declared the outbreak a global pandemic with Europe being its new epicentre.

With India in the third week of its 21-day lockdown, the total number of confirmed cases of novel coronavirus surged to 5,194, the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare said on Wednesday.

Of these, 4,643 are active cases of COVID-19, 401 individuals have recovered and discharged from the hospital, one person migrated to another country and 149 people succumbed to the disease.

Amongst the total affected people, 70 are foreign nationals.

Maharashtra remained the worst hit state with a total number of positive cases rising to 1,018, followed by Tamil Nadu which has 690 cases, according to the Health Ministry data. IANS