Over 100,000 coronavirus deaths in 101 days, half of them in less than a week

New Delhi : It has been 101 days when the world first heard about the mysterious coronavirus that emerged from Wuhan City in China.

On Friday, the total number of casualties crossed 100,000-mark; fatalities have doubled and the total number of infections grew by 600,000 in the last week alone, according to the Johns Hopkins University Coronavirus Research Center.

The United States and Europe stand worst hit in the tally with 77% of the positive coronavirus cases accounting to these two countries. 87% of the deaths belong to the nation too.

"The attention now should be on lower and middle income countries like India and the sooner you start testing at a widespread level, the better you will know what is going on in your country," said Bhramar Mukherjee, the head of biostatistics at University of Michigan.

"The acceleration curve in India looks completely different than other countries – India is doubling infections in about six days while a country like UK takes three days," she said, adding that it is important to determine whether this is because of lack of reporting or other factors such as temperature and genetics.

Though extending lockdown seems to be the best option as of now to contain the virus spread, practically it has its own set of complications, majorly the unemployment and buying power trouble for the citizens.

Since the middle of March, some of the biggest economies of the world have locked down their cities and are now struggling with the question of when to lift some of these curbs and let industries restart to fend off further economic devastation.

So far, more than 1.6 million coronavirus cases have been reported across the globe. Over 370,000 have recovered from the disease.