Five months since the World Health Organization declared the coronavirus crisis a global pandemic, the number of COVID-19 cases globally has reached 20 million worldwide with almost 730,000 known deaths.
According to Worldometer, which provides updates on the pandemic, 734,239 fatalities have been recorded so far globally.
The tally of recoveries worldwide is currently 12,909,733.
The US leads the pack with 5,199,444 cases, trailed by Brazil with 3,035,582 and India with 2,217,245.
Both the Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro and the US President Donald Trump have in the last five months sought to downplay the danger of the virus, with Bolsonaro calling it “the little flu” and Trump repeatedly promising the disease would disappear under his leadership.
Last week, Trump repeated that he believes coronavirus will “go away”, despite his top public health expert, Dr Anthony Fauci, warning that it could take most of 2021 or longer to get the pandemic under control and that it is “unlikely” the virus can ever be eradicated.
The pair have sidelined health experts, with Bolsonaro losing two health ministers and Trump repeatedly criticising Fauci, the US’s top infectious diseases expert and a member of the White House’s coronavirus taskforce.
There are now 29 countries with higher cases than China, which has 88,793 confirmed infections and fewer than 5,000 deaths.
Britain, which has 312,574 cases and the fourth-highest number of deaths globally, with 46,659, saw cases rise by 1,062 on Sunday, going over 1,000 for the first time since late June. As cases rose in the country, new local lockdowns have been implemented in some areas and worries over the second wave of infections were rife.
In Africa, South Africa has the highest number of cases with 559,859.
Nigeria with 46,577 cases is among the top 50 countries with the highest rate of infections.
On Sunday, Nigeria’s COVID-19 recovery rate recorded a significant drop with less than 150 people discharged within 24 hours.
But with 142 persons confirmed to have recovered from the disease on August 9, the number of discharged patients rose from 33,044 to 33,186.
A breakdown by the Nigeria Centre for Disease Control (NCDC) showed Lagos topped the list of new infections with 107 cases, followed by the FCT with 91, and Plateau with 81, while Bauchi had the least figure with one new COVID-19 case.
