Global coronavirus cases hit one million as death toll soars to 50,000

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Luke O'Reilly3 April 2020

The number of people who have died from coronavirus around the world has now hit 50,000 as global cases passed the one million mark.

Reported cases of Covid-19 passed one million on Thursday, with the most cases in the United States, followed by Italy and Spain.

It comes after a further 560 UK hospital patients diagnosed with the virus died, marking the biggest daily spike in deaths so far.

A total of 2,921 people who tested positive for Covid-19 have died while in care, according to Department of Health figures.

The US has seen record breaking numbers filing for unemployment after 10 million people registered as unemployed in just two weeks.

About half of all working Americans report some kind of income loss affecting themselves or a member of their household due to the coronavirus pandemic, with low-income Americans and those without college degrees especially likely to have lost a job, according to a new poll from The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research.

Sixty percent of Americans now say the national economy is "poor," an alarmingly swift reversal from the 67% who called it "good" in January. The spike in pessimism has followed a stock market collapse and the closures of businesses around the country as regular economic activity has been halted in an attempt to limit the number of COVID-19 deaths to hundreds of thousands instead of millions.

The income losses include pay cuts, unpaid time off and reduced hours, as well as actual lost jobs, with 23% of adults who had work when the outbreak started saying they or a member of their household have since been laid off. A third of those in households making less than $50,000 a year say they or a household member have lost their job.

Meanwhile Spain's death toll from the coronavirus rose above 10,000 on Thursday after a record 950 people died overnight.

Spain has the world's second-highest death toll after Italy at 10,003 but Thursday's one-day toll was the highest for any country since the start of the epidemic.

The number of registered coronavirus cases rose about 8% from Wednesday to 110,238, the ministry said. The total deaths rose by just over 10%, about the same rate as the previous day.

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However, the daily increase in infections in percentage terms has been slowing gradually since March 25, when reported cases rose by just over 20%.

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