Scientists around the world are racing to develop a vaccine for Covid-19. Chinese company Sinovac gives rare access to how one is created. Video / Sky News / Getty
One million people around the world have now died from Covid-19 since the pandemic began.
The grim milestone was reached today.
According to figures from the Johns Hopkins University of Medicine, there has been more than 32 million confirmed cases of Covid-19 globally.
Around seven million cases have been identifiedin the United States – more than any other country. America also leads the death toll, recording more than more than 200,000 deaths.
It is followed by Brazil, with more than 130,000 deaths, then India, Mexico, United Kingdom, Italy, Peru, France, Spain and Iran.
In contrast, Australia has recorded 27,000 cases of the virus and more than 850 deaths. More than 650 of these deaths have been in Victoria.
The death toll in America has now exceeded upper estimates of the pandemic's impact and some experts are warning it could nearly double by the end of the year.
"I hoped we would be in a better place by now," epidemiologist at the Johns Hopkins Centre for Health Security Caitlin Rivers told NPR. "It's an enormous and tragic loss of life."
Coronavirus is now one of the leading causes of death in the US and Prof Rivers believes if the trend continues, Covid-19 will likely be the third-leading cause of death after heart disease and cancer in the US.
"For comparison, by the end of the year we will likely have seen more deaths from Covid-19 than we saw from diabetes, influenza and pneumonia, kidney disease and suicide combined in 2017," she said.
US President Donald Trump has been criticised for this handling of the pandemic but says he believes the country is doing well.
Experts including Bob Bednarczyk, assistant professor of global health and epidemiology at Emory University in Atlanta, say many of the deaths in the US could have been prevented by the widespread use of face masks, social distancing and other measures.
The World Health Organisation (WHO) declared Covid-19 a pandemic in March when 90 per cent of the cases were located in just four countries: China, South Korea, Italy and Iran.
At the time, more than 120,000 cases of the virus had been confirmed across 114 countries, and 4373 people had died.
