Over 26 lakh coronavirus COVID-19 cases worldwide, death toll crosses 1.86 lakh

The total number of coronavirus COVID-19 cases across 185 nations spiralled towards 2,678,585 and the death toll stood at 186,640 at 11.45 pm (IST) on Thursday (April 23), even as the battle between humanity and the virus continued to surge.

With the highest numbers both in positive cases and death toll, the US continues to remain the worst-hit with a total of 847,985. It is followed by Spain with 213,024 cases, Italy with 189,973 cases, France with 157,135 cases and Germany with 151,285 cases.

With a massive jump, the US has witnessed the highest death toll across all the nations at 47,178, followed by Italy at 25,549, Spain at 22,157, France at 21,373 and the UK at 18,791.

In the US, state officials say there remain bottlenecks in testing capacity, shortages of materials such as swabs used for taking samples and not enough workers to contact- trace infections. In addition to a staggering death toll, unemployment claims soared on Thursday and reaffirmed the grim economic toll of the coronavirus pandemic. Over 26.5 million Americans have sought unemployment benefits over the last five weeks, confirming that all the jobs gained during the longest employment boom in U.S. history have been wiped out as the novel coronavirus savages the economy.

The US House of Representatives said that the $484 billion coronavirus relief bill will fund small businesses and hospitals and push the total spending response to the crisis to an unprecedented nearly $3 trillion. The measure is expected to receive solid bipartisan support in the Democratic-led House but threatened opposition by some members of both parties forced legislators to return to Washington despite stay-at-home orders intended to control the spread of the virus. The Republican-led Senate passed the legislation on Tuesday by unanimous consent, allowing senators to stay at home. Approval by the House will send it the White House, where Republican President Donald Trump has promised to quickly sign it into law.

US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said a fundamental reform of the World Health Organization was needed following its handling of the coronavirus pandemic and that the United States, the WHO`s biggest donor, may never restore funding to the UN. body. As Pompeo launched fresh attacks on the U.N. body on Wednesday, Democrats in the U.S. House of Representatives accused the Trump administration of trying to "scapegoat" the WHO to distract from its handling of the coronavirus outbreak.

In Italy, deaths from the COVID-19 epidemic climbed by 464 on Thursday, against 437 the day before, the Civil Protection Agency said, but the daily tally of new infections declined to 2,646 from 3,370 on April 22. People registered as currently carrying the illness fell to 106,848 from 107,699 on Wednesday, a fourth consecutive daily decline. There were 2,267 people in intensive care on Thursday against 2,384 on Wednesday, maintaining a long-running decline. Of those originally infected, 57,576 were declared recovered against 54,543 a day earlier. For the first time, the civil protection unit published data on how many people had been tested for the virus so far in Italy, putting the number at 1.053 million, out of a population of around 60 million.

Spain has recorded 440 new deaths overnight for the new coronavirus, bringing the total confirmed fatalities to over 22,000 according to an official data on Thursday. With more than 4,600 new positive infections tested, the reported cases are now over 200,000. On Thursday, a new genetic study published by the Carlos III Institute, Spain's main epidemiology research centre, suggested that the new coronavirus was spreading in the country since mid-February, weeks before the first local contagion clusters were identified.

The number of people who have died from coronavirus infection in France rose by 516 on Thursday, the health ministry said in a statement. The 2.4% increase was slightly slower than on Wednesday and Thursday when the death toll increased by 2.6%, but well below the more than 4% rate seen last week. The number of people in hospital with COVID-19 infection fell further to 29,129 from 29,741 on Wednesday and the number of people in intensive care fell to 5,053 from 5,218 on Wednesday. Both have been on a downward trend for several days.