According to researchers at Johns Hopkins University, there have been almost one million confirmed deaths from Covid-19 in the world. That is nearly 10 months after news of the new virus began to emerge in the Chinese city of Wuhan.
But the figure is only an estimate. Different countries report deaths in different ways, and in some nations critics accuse health authorities of missing or even deliberately under-counting the true death toll.
Moreover, testing is far from universal. Countries around the world may well be missing deaths that were the direct result of the virus because officials did not know a person had contracted the illness.