More than 2,000,000 people have now died with Covid worldwide
The global Covid-19 death toll has passed the grim milestone of two million.
The tally, from the Johns Hopkins University, passed the threshold on Friday, with a new figure of 2,000,905.
The number is about equal to the population of Brussels, Mecca, Minsk or Vienna.
A total of 87,295 of these deaths occurred in the UK, according to official Government figures.
More than 93 million people have tested positive worldwide since the pandemic hit, with 3,325,620 of these cases in the UK.
The tragic figures come just over a year after coronavirus was first detected in Wuhan, China.
The numbers are provided by Government agencies – but the real death toll is said to be significantly higher.
This is mainly down to inadequate testing at the start of the pandemic, as well as many fatalities being inaccurately attributed to other causes early in the outbreak.
It took eight months to hit the one million milestones, but only four months more to reach the next million.
UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said: ‘Behind this terrible number are names and faces – the smile that will now only be a memory, the seat forever empty at the dinner table, the room that echoes with the silence of a loved one’.
He claimed the death toll ‘has been made worse by the absence of a global coordinated effort’, adding: ‘Science has succeeded, but solidarity has failed.’
Get in touch with our news team by emailing us at webnews@metro.co.uk.
For more stories like this, check our news page.