Coronavirus cases reach 1m worldwide with more than 50,000 deaths

Cases double in space of eight days to bring global infections to seven figures

More than a million people have been diagnosed with coronavirus in the four months since it was first observed in China in December, officials at Johns Hopkins have confirmed.

The virus, which has been been present in more than 50,000 deaths, tipped past the million mark on Thursday night – doubling over the space of just eight days.

The first 100,000 cases of the virus were reported within around 55 days of its discovery, while the first 500,000 cases were reached in 76 days.

Alongside the figure, the rate of infection appears to also be growing.Total cases reported by Thursday grew 10 per cent from a day earlier, the first time the rate has hit double digits since the virus took hold outside China.

However despite formally pushing into seven figures, scientists believe the actual number of carriers across the globe is much higher – with numbers only reflecting the number of people tested in each afflicted country.

It is also believed a number of people will have not shown severe enough symptoms to warrant testing, while concerns have been raised over the truthfullness of figures coming from some governments including Tehran and Beijing.

Dubbed Covid-19 by the World Health Organisation, the virus first spread in the city of Wuhan in China’s Hubei province in December, before reaching across to Italy, Iran and South Korea.

From there the epicentre of the virus has increasingly become Europe and America while China, once the worst afflicted nation in the world, has since reported dwindling figures.

Johns Hopkins in Baltimore said more than 200,000 people had recovered from the disease, more than 75,000 of them in China.

There are 117 countries and territories that have reported over 100 cases, 50 with outbreaks of over 1,000 and seven that have reported 50,000 or more Covid-19 cases – the US, Italy, Spain, Germany, China, France and Iran.

In particular the US has seen case numbers skyrocket, rising from more than 12,000 to more than 212,000 in the space of a fortnight. Deaths in the country have also risen from 175 to 4,746 in the same span of time, while today figures showed more than 6.6 million Americans applied for unemployment benefits last week in the latest indication that the pandemic is ravaging the nation’s economy.

It comes as nations across the globe reporting increasingly dire straits.

In New York hospitals and morgues were reportedly strained by an ever growing number of cases, while in Spain the death toll rose to more than 10,000 after a record 950 people died overnight.

In Italy, which has reported the highest number of fatalities worldwide, the death toll climbed to 13,915 – however, despite growing numbers of deaths, it marked fourth consecutive day in which the number of new cases stayed within a range of 4,050-4,782, seeming to confirm government hopes that the epidemic had hit a plateau.

Additional reporting by agencies