Coronavirus: Spain’s Death Toll Exceeds 10,000

In the last 24 hours, 950 people have died in Spain from the Chinese coronavirus, causing the nation’s overall death toll from the virus to exceed 10,000 as of Thursday.

Newly released data from health officials in Madrid reported that 950 people have died from the coronavirus in a single day, pushing the nation’s death toll to over 10,000. Overall, global confirmed cases of the virus have already reached one million at press time.

“In the next day or two, we will reach more than 1 million confirmed cases of COVID-19 globally, and 50,000 deaths,” said World Health Organization (WHO) Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus on Thursday.

Spain has been bracing for a surge of cases similar to the recent experience of Italy in the past week. Its death toll is starting to catch up to that of Europe’s epicenter for the disease, which exceeded 13,000 deaths on Wednesday. Unlike in Spain, Italian officials believe that Italy has reached its “peak” as the daily percentage increase and new coronavirus cases have been on the decline for the past several days.

As for Spain, the Chinese coronavirus has now claimed 10,003 lives, while the number of confirmed cases rises from 102,136 on Wednesday to 110,238 on Thursday, an eight percent increase, according to BBC.

“We continue with an increase of around eight percent,” said María José Sierra – from the Spanish Health Ministry’s emergency coordination unit – at a press conference on Thursday. “This points, as we have already seen, to a stabilization in the data that we’re registering.”

Sierra added that this is resulting in an “important lowering” in the increase in the number of people being taken to intensive care units, already under pressure across the country, reports BBC.

The United States has exceeded 5,000 coronavirus-related deaths as of Thursday. According to data from Johns Hopkins University, 5,648 people have died of the Wuhan virus in the U.S., with confirmed cases rising to 236,339.

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