The body storage facility at a funeral parlour in Soweto on 21 July. Photographer Michel Bega explains: 'Due to the number of deaths from Covid-19, this funeral home had been forced to increase its storage facilities. This image was taken as part of a feature which saw The Citizen team being taken on a tour of the facility. It’s not the first time I’ve been into such a facility, but this time was different. Description tags on the cold storage doors gave the name and cause of death for each individual. More than half were due to Covid-19. It was quite nerve-racking being literally so close to the virus and the effects.’
The novel coronavirus has killed at least 2,581,034 people since the outbreak emerged in China in December 2019, according to a tally from official sources compiled by AFP at 1100 GMT on Saturday.
At least 116,031,470 cases of coronavirus have been registered.
The vast majority have recovered, though some have continued to experience symptoms weeks or even months later.
These figures are based on daily tolls provided by health authorities in each country and exclude later re-evaluations by statistical organisations, as has happened in Russia, Spain and Britain.
On Friday, 10,685 new deaths and 450,657 new cases were recorded worldwide.
Based on latest reports, the countries with the most new deaths were United States with 2,530 new deaths, followed by Brazil with 1,800 and Mexico with 712.
The United States is the worst-affected country with 522,879 deaths from 28,895,047 cases.
After the US, the hardest-hit countries are Brazil with 262,770 deaths from 10,869,227 cases, Mexico with 189,578 deaths from 2,119,305 cases, India with 157,656 deaths from 11,192,088 cases, and the United Kingdom with 124,261 deaths from 4,207,304 cases.
The country with the highest number of deaths compared to its population is Czech Republic with 201 fatalities per 100,000 inhabitants, followed by Belgium with 192, Slovenia 187, United Kingdom 183 and Montenegro 167.
Europe overall has 871,426 deaths from 38,427,275 cases, Latin America and the Caribbean 693,735 deaths from 21,875,286 infections, and the United States and Canada 545,063 deaths from 29,775,553 cases.
Asia has reported 259,009 deaths from 16,308,187 cases, the Middle East 105,582 deaths from 5,662,330 cases, Africa 105,268 deaths from 3,950,208 cases, and Oceania 951 deaths from 32,637 cases.
Since the start of the pandemic, the number of tests conducted has greatly increased while testing and reporting techniques have improved, leading to a rise in reported cases.
However the number of diagnosed cases is only a part of the real total number of infections as a significant number of less serious or asymptomatic cases always remain undetected.
As a result of corrections by national authorities or late publication of data, the figures updated over the past 24 hours may not correspond exactly to the previous day’s tallies.
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