The figure is roughly double the number of severe influenza illnesses recorded annually, according to the World Health Organisation.

While the overall rate of death has flattened in recent weeks, health experts have expressed concerns about record numbers of new cases in countries like the United States, India and Brazil, as well as new outbreaks in parts of Asia.
About one-quarter of all the deaths so far have been in the United States, the Reuters data shows. The recent surge in cases have been most pronounced in a handful of Southern and Western states that reopened earlier and more aggressively.

The number of cases in Latin America on Sunday surpassed those diagnosed in Europe, making the region the second most affected by the pandemic, after North America.

Renewing its call on Friday for global collaboration against the pandemic, it said $3.4 billion had been contributed for the coalition to date, leaving a funding gap of $27.9 billion. Of that, $13.7 billion was “urgently needed”.

The WHO is working with a large coalition of drug-development, funding and distribution organisations under what it calls the ACT-Accelerator Hub.

The initiative is intended to develop and deliver 500 million Covid-19 tests and 245 million courses of new treatment for the disease to low- and middle-income countries by mid-2021, it said in a statement.

The new coronavirus has hit 9.3 million people and killed more than 480,000 so far and is rising by about 1 million cases per week. This has pushed oxygen demand to 88,000 large cylinders per day, or 620,000 cubic metres of oxygen, WHO Director General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said.