SOURCE: BBC NEWS

The world's coro­n­avirus death toll nears one mil­lion, with the US, Brazil and In­dia mak­ing up near­ly half of the to­tal, ac­cord­ing to Johns Hop­kins Uni­ver­si­ty, which is track­ing the dis­ease glob­al­ly.

But the num­ber is like­ly to be much high­er as test­ing rates in many coun­tries re­main low, with virus-re­lat­ed deaths not be­ing record­ed.

In ad­di­tion, the uni­ver­si­ty is re­port­ing that the num­ber of con­firmed coro­n­avirus cas­es around the world has passed 33 mil­lion.

US au­thor­i­ties could see an ex­plo­sion of Covid-19 cas­es in the fall and win­ter months. The coun­try has the high­est num­ber of con­firmed in­fec­tions, with 7.1 mil­lion, fol­lowed by In­dia, with near­ly 6.1 mil­lion, and Brazil, with 4.7 mil­lion.  The UK has seen near­ly 42,000 deaths, and cas­es have been ris­ing by an av­er­age of more than 5,500 a day.

FLASHBACK... A stretcher is moved from an AMR ambulance to the Life Care Center of Kirkland where one associate and one resident were diagnosed with the novel coronavirus (COVID-19) according to a statement released by the facility in Kirkland, Washington on February 29, 2020. (Photo by JASON REDMOND/AFP via Getty Images)

JASON REDMOND

These lat­est glob­al sta­tis­tics come near­ly 10 months af­ter news be­gan to emerge about mys­te­ri­ous cas­es of vi­ral pneu­mo­nia in Wuhan, Chi­na.

How­ev­er, re­searchers ad­mit the COVID deaths fig­ure is on­ly an es­ti­mate. Dif­fer­ent coun­tries re­port deaths in dif­fer­ent ways, and in some na­tions crit­ics ac­cuse health au­thor­i­ties of miss­ing or even de­lib­er­ate­ly un­der-count­ing the true death toll.

More­over, test­ing is far from uni­ver­sal. Coun­tries around the world may well be miss­ing deaths that were the di­rect re­sult of the virus be­cause of­fi­cials did not know a per­son had con­tract­ed the ill­ness.

More re­stric­tions hop­ing to slow down in­fec­tions

Tight re­stric­tions have been ex­pand­ed in the Span­ish cap­i­tal, Madrid, and its sur­round­ing ar­eas, af­fect­ing one mil­lion res­i­dents. From Mon­day, peo­ple will not be able to leave their area un­less to go to school or work, pub­lic parks will close and open­ing hours will be re­strict­ed. More than 31,000 peo­ple are con­firmed to have died with the virus since the pan­dem­ic reached Spain, ac­cord­ing to fig­ures from Johns Hop­kins Uni­ver­si­ty.  How­ev­er, the true death toll may be high­er as some fa­tal­i­ties may not have been count­ed at the be­gin­ning of the pan­dem­ic.

France has also seen a spike in coronavirus cases. (Image: REUTERS)

In France, bars in Paris and 11 oth­er ar­eas will have to re­main closed be­tween 10:00pm and 06:00 am, and there is a ban on fes­tive or recre­ation­al events in­clud­ing wed­ding re­cep­tions, stu­dents’ par­ties and or­gan­ised gath­er­ings in hired lo­ca­tions. Last week, France record­ed its high­est num­ber of cas­es since lock­down re­stric­tions were eased. How­ev­er, the Fi­nance Min­is­ter said the gov­ern­ment had no plan to or­der a new na­tion­wide lock­down to con­tain a resur­gence in in­fec­tions.

Cafes and bars in the Bel­gian cap­i­tal Brus­sels will have to close by 11:00 pm while oth­er busi­ness­es sell­ing food and drink will have to shut at 10:00 pm. De­spite its small pop­u­la­tion of around 11.5 mil­lion peo­ple, Bel­gium has been bad­ly hit by the pan­dem­ic, with more than 114,000 cas­es and al­most 10,000 deaths. The coun­try has record­ed more than 167 cas­es per 100,000 peo­ple over the past two weeks.

Last week, Munich made masks compulsory in parts of the city amid a rise in cases. (Image: EPA)

In Ger­many, a spokesman for Chan­cel­lor An­gela Merkel said the grow­ing num­ber of new cas­es was "high­ly wor­ry­ing".  Ger­man tabloid Bild re­port­ed that Merkel told her par­ty's se­nior mem­bers that num­bers could reach 19,200 per day by Christ­mas if cur­rent trends con­tin­ue. Ger­many is cur­rent­ly see­ing around 2,000 new cas­es per day. While Ger­many has record­ed more than 286,000 coro­n­avirus cas­es so far, its death toll of 9,465 is far low­er than fig­ures seen in oth­er ma­jor Eu­ro­pean coun­tries, in­clud­ing the UK, France and Spain.

Mexico currently has the world's fourth-highest number of coronavirus deaths. (Image: REUTERS)

The full ex­tent of the coro­n­avirus pan­dem­ic in Mex­i­co may not be known for sev­er­al years, a se­nior health of­fi­cial has said. Mex­i­co cur­rent­ly has the world's fourth-high­est num­ber of coro­n­avirus fa­tal­i­ties, with 76,430 deaths. The coun­try has al­so reg­is­tered more than 730,000 cas­es, ac­cord­ing to fig­ures from Johns Hop­kins Uni­ver­si­ty. How­ev­er, Mex­i­co on­ly counts peo­ple who died af­ter re­ceiv­ing a pos­i­tive re­sult for coro­n­avirus and test­ing fig­ures in the coun­try re­main low, the As­so­ci­at­ed Press news agency re­ports.

India has a challenge of ensuring its health workers have enough protective gear. (Image: GETTY IMAGES)

In­dia’s health min­istry has con­firmed that COVID pos­i­tive cas­es have sur­passed six mil­lion.  In­dia has been con­sis­tent­ly av­er­ag­ing around 95,000 cas­es per day, part­ly due to in­creased test­ing in many states. In ad­di­tion, the coun­try is grad­u­al­ly re­open­ing—shop­ping cen­tres, metro sta­tions and mar­kets are crowd­ed again—bring­ing in­creased risk of in­fec­tion spread­ing fast in new clus­ters. Ex­perts say the sit­u­a­tion may get worse be­cause of the up­com­ing fes­tive sea­son es­pe­cial­ly dur­ing the fes­ti­val of Di­wali when peo­ple go out to shop.

Tunisia'’s government has now issued new measures, with threats to shutdown businesses that flout the rules. (Image: Zoubeir Souissi/REUTERS)

There is a re­al wor­ry that in­fec­tion rates of COVID-19 in Tunisia are get­ting out of con­trol with near­ly 1,000 new cas­es be­ing record­ed per day, and more peo­ple get­ting hos­pi­talised. The gov­ern­ment has now is­sued new mea­sures, with threats to shut­down busi­ness­es that flout the rules. Cafes and tea halls are now banned from serv­ing hookahs, or wa­ter-pipe to­bac­co. Restau­rants and night­clubs must use nat­ur­al ven­ti­la­tion by keep­ing win­dows and doors open, and ap­ply phys­i­cal dis­tanc­ing rules. Cel­e­bra­tions at home or in wed­ding halls may on­ly use 30% of the space ca­pac­i­ty. The Tunisian au­thor­i­ties have al­so warned of the po­ten­tial for spe­cial mea­sures to be ap­plied to high-risk ar­eas with par­tial two-week lock­downs.