The global toll of the COVID-19 coronavirus pandemic reached another grim new milestone on Thursday as recorded deaths from the new virus topped 10,000, according to a tally by Johns Hopkins University’s Center for Systems Science and Engineering. As of Thursday night, 10,030 people have died from COVID-29, with more than half of the deaths in Italy (3,405) and China (3,132). Globally, 244,517 have been confirmed to have contracted the coronavirus, but that number is certainly much larger due to inadequate testing and inaccurate reporting by governments. At least 86,025 people have recovered.
Italy has the world’s deadliest official coronavirus outbreak, but Iran’s cases are almost certainly being underreported. Researchers at Sharif University of Technology in Tehran created a computer model of the country’s epidemic that predicted more than 12,000 deaths in a best-case scenario — effective government quarantines, access to medical supplies currently strangled by U.S. sanctions — and in a more realistic scenario, 3.5 million deaths by late May.