Dramatic Milestone: Reuters Tally Says Global COVID-19 Death Toll Has Hit Five Million

Over the past seven days, an average of 8,000 COVID-related deaths has been reported daily across the globe, which means that about five fatalities have taken place every minute.

The global COVID-19 death toll surpassed five million people on Friday, amid countries’ efforts to combat the highly contagious Delta variant of the coronavirus, a Reuters tally has shown.

The news outlet claimed that it took about a year for the coronavirus death toll to hit the 2.5 million ceiling, while the 2.5 more fatalities were registered in 236 days.

According to the tally, more than half of all global deaths, reported on a seven-day average, were recorded in just five countries, including Brazil, India, Mexico, the United States, and Russia.

Johns Hopkins University's (JHU) latest estimates, in turn, suggest that the global coronavirus death tally currently stands at 4.7 million. According to the estimates, the United States has the highest death toll and overall coronavirus tally, with 700,379 fatalities and 43.6 million infections, respectively.

The US is followed by India (more than 33.7 million cases and 448,573 deaths) and Brazil (21.4 million cases and a death toll of 597,255), JHU’s statistics showed.

Scientists have, meanwhile, likened the Delta strain’s transmissibility to that of chickenpox, which is one of the most contagious viruses known. Each individual can spread the virus to as many as "90 percent of the people close to that person", according to the US Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).