Worldwide corona toll crosses 400,000

ISLAMABAD: The novel coronavirus has killed at least 400,472 people since the outbreak first emerged in China last December, according to international media reports.

At least 6,926,560 cases of coronavirus have been registered in 196 countries and territories. Of these, at least 3,389,218 are now considered recovered.

The United States is the worst-hit country with 111,858 deaths from 1,980,879 cases. After the US, the hardest-hit countries are Britain with 40,465 deaths from 284,868 cases, Brazil with 35,211 deaths and 651,980 infections, Italy with 33,846 deaths from 234,801 cases, and France with 29,142 deaths and 153,634 cases.

China — excluding Hong Kong and Macau — has to date declared 4,634 deaths and 83,030 infections. It has 78,329 recovered cases.

Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro has threatened to pull out of the WHO over “ideological bias,” as his counterpart Donald Trump said the US economy was recovering from the coronavirus pandemic while Europe slowly reopens its borders.

From Africa to Europe to Asia, governments are focused on reviving economies ravaged by weeks of restrictions to contain the virus.

European countries that are among the hardest hit are steadily reopening with the infection rates slowing even as Latin America is battered by the epidemic, especially Brazil which now has the world’s third-highest number of virus deaths.

Fuelling the debate raging around the pandemic, its origins and the best way to respond, Bolsonaro criticised the WHO for suspending clinical trials of the drug hydroxychloroquine for COVID-19 — a decision it reversed this week — and threatened to follow in Trump’s footsteps by quitting.

“I’m telling you right now, the United States left the WHO, and we’re studying that, in the future. Either the WHO works without ideological bias, or we leave, too,” the far-right leader told journalists. Dubbed the “Tropical Trump,” Bolsonaro has followed the US president in his handling of the pandemic, downplaying its severity, attacking stay-at-home measures and touting the purported effects of hydroxychloroquine against COVID-19.

The WHO had suspended trials of hydroxychloroquine after major studies raised concerns about its safety and effectiveness — irking Trump, who even took the drug himself as a preventive measure.

Most of the authors of the studies that appeared in The Lancet and the New England Journal of Medicine retracted their work, saying they could no longer vouch for their data because the firm that supplied it refused to be audited.

But a new study from Oxford University said Friday that hydroxychloroquine showed “no beneficial effect” in treating COVID-19. In the US — the hardest-hit country, Trump also said the economy was bouncing back.

“We had the greatest economy in the history of the world. And that strength let us get through this horrible pandemic, largely through, I think we’re doing really well,” he told reporters.

Trump, who is facing re-election in November, reiterated his calls to further ease stay-at-home measures, after surprisingly upbeat employment numbers showed the country gained 2.5 million jobs in May.

In a sign of the slow return to normal in the US, Universal Orlando became the first of the giant theme parks in sunny Florida to reopen — albeit with temperature controls at the entrance and mandatory face masks.

The South Pacific island of French Polynesia also said it will reopen to international travel next month to try to salvage its vital tourism industry.

In Europe, badly-hit countries slowly continued on a path toward a post-pandemic normal, also seeking to revive key tourist sectors in time for the summer season.

The EU said it could reopen borders to travellers from outside the region in early July, after some countries within the bloc reopened to European visitors.

A major Spanish tourism draw, Madrid’s Prado museum, reopened its doors to a handful of visitors Saturday, putting together more than 200 masterpieces in a new exhibition.

In France, the Palace of Versailles also reopened, but without the American and Chinese tourists that usually make up a third of its visitors.

A top French expert said Friday that dramatic drops in daily deaths and new cases in the country since their March peaks meant the worst was over.

Afghanistan is running out of hospital beds as suspected cases of coronavirus surge, officials said on Saturday, warning “there is a disaster coming” in the impoverished country.

Afghan health authorities reported 761 new positive cases of COVID-19 over the past 24 hours, taking the total number of confirmed infections to 19,551.

“Our (hospital) beds are almost full, we won’t have any more capacity very soon,” Health Minister Ahmad Jawad Osmani told reporters.

Officials said the number of cases were more than expected, including in the capital Kabul, the epicentre of the disease.

“There is a disaster coming,” said Kabul governor Mohammad Yakub Haidary at a joint press conference with the health minister.

He said in Kabul alone there could be a million people infected with the deadly virus.

So far there have been 327 confirmed deaths in the country.

“We have reports of increasing suspected deaths, people burying dead bodies at night,” Haidary said.

“We fill 10-15 ambulances of dead people every day.”

India reported a record 10,346 new coronavirus cases in one day on Saturday and overtook Italy as the world’s sixth-biggest outbreak, two days before the relaxing of a lockdown with the reopening of malls, restaurants and places of worship.