Global COVID-19 deaths hit 2 million — with 3.8% recorded in Africa

The world has reached a frightening COVID-19 record, with at least two million people confirmed dead from the disease.

The sour landmark was recorded on Thursday night after about 16,000 deaths were reported from across the world.

Worldometers, the global statistics platform, is reporting that as of Friday, the total fatalities now stand at 2,004,449 — that is 2.1 percent of the 93,612,526 COVID-19 cases.

At least 72 percent of the total number of patients — or 67 million — have so far recovered.

United States remains the worst-hit country after recording 25 percent of the cases worldwide with 23.8 million infections, out of which 398,000 have died.

India is next in line with 152,000 deaths from 10.5 million cases, followed by Brazil where 207,000 patients have died out of the 8.3 million infected.

At the continental level, North America leads with the highest number of infections at 27.2 million out of which 574,700 have died.

Africa remains among the least affected with 3.2 million cases — 3.4 percent of the global tally — with a fatality rate of 2.4 percent after recording 77,000 deaths — 3.8 percent of the global tally.

The second wave is still sweeping across many countries including Nigeria which recorded its worst daily death tally in seven months on Thursday.

A total of 105,478 COVID-19 infections have so far been confirmed in the country out of which 1,405 persons have died, but 83,830 have been discharged.

The global race to beat the virus is still on with many countries now using approved vaccines. Nigeria is among those expecting 600 million doses from the World Health Organisation (WHO).

The coronavirus pandemic remains the deadliest in recent history, though not close to the 1918 flu which killed about 50 million people, and HIV/AIDS that has so far killed 35 million.