More people worldwide have died from the effects of Covid-19 this year than in the whole of 2020, the year that the pandemic broke out.
Business newspaper The Wall Street Journal has calculated this based on corona data that Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, USA, keeps track of.
More than 1.88 million people worldwide have died from corona in less than six months this year. That is slightly more than the death toll of 2020. According to the newspaper, the figures show that the pandemic is far from over and show how the coronavirus is spreading unevenly worldwide, with poorer countries often only being affected later.
While western countries are currently celebrating low numbers of new infections thanks to massive vaccination campaigns, parts of Asia and Latin America are experiencing a sharp increase in infections and deaths.
The total number of recorded deaths worldwide is 3.7 million, according to Johns Hopkins University. The number of recorded infections since the start of the pandemic stands at 174 million. The actual numbers are probably higher because not every country keeps the data equally well.