Dimitris Kouimtsidis
ITALY has recorded more coronavirus deaths than China and is the country with the most fatalities worldwide.
The European country reported today that its death toll reached 3,405, overtaking the Chinese who have 3,245.
Italy, a country of around 60 million people has more Covid-19 victims than China, a country with a population of two billion.
Both the UN and Italian authorities suggest that the high number of fatalities in the mediterranean country is due to its elderly population, which is the second oldest in the world.
87% of the people who have passed away have been over the age of 70.
Jonas Schmidt-Chanasit, a virologist at Germany’s Bernhard Nocht Institute for Tropical Medicine, said Italy’s staggering death count could also be explained by the near total breakdown of the health system in some areas of the country.
“That’s what happens when the health system collapses,” he said.
This comes after China reported no new local cases yesterday, for the first time since the outbreak of the pandemic.
Wuhan, the epicentre of the coronavirus however has been on lockdown since January, so if the same timeline was applied to European countries, they would have to wait until May for similarly positive news.
