A woman passes by a world map showing countries infected with the new Coronavirus, COVID-19, during a press conference at the National Police headquerters, in Panama City, on March 10, 2020. - The Panamanian Government announced the first death by COVID-19 in the country. (Photo by Luis ACOSTA / AFP)
The global death toll from the ongoing coronavirus outbreak is now over 20,000 as at Thursday, according to data from worldometers.info shows.
Aside China, death figures from Italy, Spain, the U.S and France topped the chart of countries with the highest deaths across the world as of Wednesday.
In Italy, 683 people died from the virus on Wednesday, Spain had 656 deaths, the U.S recorded 247 and France 231.
As at Thursday, the death toll from the pandemic across the world was 21,297.
Italy, which is the new epicentre for the disease, recorded over one third of the total deaths so far from the outbreak.
As at time of reporting, the total death toll from Italy stood at 7,503.
This has more than doubled the death toll from China where the disease originated from. China has so far reported 3,287 deaths and new case cases have been on the low.
As of Thursday, a total of 471,082 people have been infected with the virus with Nigeria recording 51 cases.
WHO Director-General, Tedros Ghebreyesus on Wednesday said more people would still die from the virus except prompt actions are taken. “How many more will be determined by the decisions we make and the actions we take now.”