Global Covid-19 caseload breaches 68-million mark: Johns Hopkins University

The world coronavirus caseload has breached the 68 million cases mark and fatalities from the pathogen surge beyond the 1.55 million deaths worldwide, as per latest updates by Johns Hopkins University

The world coronavirus caseload has breached the 68 million cases mark and fatalities from the pathogen surge beyond the 1.55 million deaths worldwide, as per the latest updates by Johns Hopkins University (JHU).

As of Wednesday at 7:56 am IST, the global caseload stands at 68,161,156 while the number of fatalities stands at 1,555,138, as reported by the COVID-19 Dashboard by the Center for Systems Science and Engineering (CSSE) at JHU.

The live dashboard reported that as many as 43,899,717 patients have recovered from the disease worldwide with India maintaining its top spot of recording the highest COVID-19 recoveries in the world with over 9,178,946 patients recovering from the virus across the country.

The US continues to be the worst-affected country from the pathogen with its caseload breaching the 15 million cases mark. As of now, the tally stands at 15,161,807. The US also has the highest death toll from the virus with 286,189 succumbing to the virus across the US. As many as 5,786,915 patients have recovered from the Wuhan-originated pathogen.

India and Brazil continue to be the second and third most-affected country from the pandemic respectively reporting 9,703,770 cases and 6,674,999 cases respectively. Brazil has the second-highest death toll after the United States with 178,159 fatalities, according to the dashboard.

Russia has reported over 2,492,713 cases and 43,674 deaths and on the other hand, France has a total of 2,363,196 and 56,453 succumbing to the coronavirus.

Italy and the UK both have reported 1.75 million cases and 61,240 deaths and 62,130 fatalities respectively, the dashboard reported further.

UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson on Tuesday announced that the first vaccinations against the coronavirus have begun in the country. On December 2, the UK became the first country in the world to authorise the use of Pfizer and BioNTech for emergency purposes, thus, paving way for the delivery of the vaccines.

According to The New York Times, the vaccine made by Pfizer and BioNTech provides "strong protection" against Covid-19 within about 10 days of the first dose, according to documents published on Tuesday by the Food and Drug Administration before a meeting of its vaccine advisory group.

The World Health Organisation declared COVID-19 a pandemic on March 11, this year.