PARIS — The coronavirus pandemic has now claimed 721,902 lives since December when it first surfaced in China, according to a global tally compiled by AFP at 1100 GMT Saturday.
There have been nearly 19.5 million cases officially recorded in 196 countries and territories, with 11.5 million classed as recovered.
The United States is the country with the highest death toll at 161,358, followed by Brazil with 99,572 dead, Mexico 51,311, Britain 46,511, and India 42,518.
Latin America tops deaths
Latin America plus the Caribbean is now the region with the worst combined toll, counting 215,859 deaths compared to Europe’s 212,794.
Brazil has registered more than 3 million cases of the novel coronavirus with over 100,000 deaths, the government reported on Saturday.
The Ministry of Health said that in the last 24 hours, 905 more deaths and 49,970 new cases were reported, bringing the national death toll to 100,477 and the total caseload to 3,012,412.
The state of Sao Paulo, the most populous in the country, has been most affected by the pandemic with 25,016 deaths and 621,731 cases, followed by Rio de Janeiro with 14,070 deaths and 178,524 cases.
The Africa Center for Disease Control and Prevention (Africa CDC) on Saturday revealed that the number of COVID-19 cases across the African continent surged to 1,022,084.
The Africa CDC, a specialized healthcare agency of the 55-member African Union (AU) Commission, in its latest situation update issued on Saturday, said that the number of deaths related to COVID-19 rose from 22,066 on Friday to 22,461 on Saturday.
The continental disease control and prevention agency also said the number of people who recovered from their COVID-19 infections passed the 700,000 mark.
Turkmenistan agrees to WHO sampling
Turkmenistan, which officially has no coronavirus cases, has agreed to let the World Health Organization (WHO) carry out independent sampling of virus tests after it expressed “serious concern” over rising pneumonia cases there.
A WHO mission visited the secretive gas-rich Central Asian state last month and advised it to adopt measures including contact tracing “as if COVID-19 were already circulating.”
Masks compulsory in Paris
Wearing a mask will be compulsory in parts of Paris and its wider region from Monday to combat a rise in coronavirus infections in and around the French capital, the police say.
The mask will be obligatory for all those aged 11 and over from 8 a.m. (0600 GMT) Monday “in certain very crowded zones,” the police said in a statement Saturday, without yet detailing which areas are affected.
India’s cases surpass 2.1 million
India’s total COVID-19 tally rose to 2,153,010 and the number of deaths surged to 43,379, according to the latest data issued by the federal health ministry on Sunday.
An increase of 64,399 new cases and 861 new deaths were recorded during the past 24 hours, added the data.
At least seven people died in India’s southern state of Andhra Pradesh when a fire engulfed a COVID-19 facility on Sunday morning, a local administration official said.
The mishap took place in a hotel converted into COVID-19 facility at the state’s Vijayawada district.
Nearly 20 people were safely rescued from the site and transferred to a hospital.