Worst is yet to come: WHO

Reaching the half-year milestone just as the death toll surpassed 500,000 and the number of confirmed infections topped 10 million, the WHO warned that the worst is yet to come.

“We will need even greater stores of resilience, patience, humility and generosity in the months ahead. We have already lost so much – but we cannot lose hope,” said WHO chief Tedros.

More than 4,700 people are dying every 24 hours from Covid-19-linked illness, based on an average for June 1 to 27. That equates to 196 people per hour, or one person every 18 seconds.

The first recorded death from the novel virus was on Jan 9 in Wuhan, China. In just five months, the Covid-19 death toll has overtaken the number of people who die annually from malaria. The death rate averages out to 78,000 per month.

Source: Dawn; June 30, 2020.