The global death toll from the novel coronavirus has topped 500,000, a tally by Johns Hopkins University showed Sunday.
The United States has had the most deaths with over 125,000, followed by Brazil at more than 57,000. The two countries currently account for about a third of the world's total cases, which on Sunday surpassed 10 million globally, according to the university tally.
Britain, Italy, France and Spain came in next, followed by Mexico and India. The latter two nations are still seeing an upward trend in the virus' spread and have recorded 26,000 and 16,000 deaths, respectively.
A total of nine countries including Iran have more than 10,000 fatalities. Japan has 972, according to Johns Hopkins University
The worldwide death toll hit 100,000 on April 10, some three months after the first case of COVID-19, the respiratory disease caused by the virus, was reported to the World Health Organization.
The number of deaths doubled to 200,000 in 15 days, but showed some signs of slowing as it took 19 days to increase to 300,000 and 24 days to hit 400,000.
But with the figure topping 500,000 in just 21 days following a jump in the number of infections from mid-June, the pace of the death toll is once again quickening.
According to Sunday's WHO situation report, the Americas account for around half of the global infection cases and deaths, with the region reporting 62 percent of the new infection cases and 69 percent of new deaths from the previous day.
The virus is currently spreading most rapidly in Latin America, which accounted for 38 percent of new infection cases and 55 percent of new deaths from the previous day.
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Global coronavirus infections top 10 million: U.S. tally
