FILE PHOTO: Mortuary employees transport the body of a person in an elderly residence following the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) outbreak in Brussels, Belgium April 14, 2020. REUTERS/Yves Herman/File Photo
(Reuters) – The number of deaths linked to the novel coronavirus reached 150,000 on Friday, according to a Reuters tally.
The first death came in the central Chinese city of Wuhan on Jan. 9. It took 83 days for the first 50,000 deaths to be recorded and just eight more for the toll to climb to 100,000. It took another eight days to go from 100,000 to 150,000.
The death toll is still far short of the so-called Spanish flu, which began in 1918 and is estimated to have killed more than 20 million people by the time it petered out in 1920.
* Interactive graphic tracking global spread of coronavirus, open in external browser: tmsnrt.rs/3aIRuz7 in an external browser
Writing by Lisa Shumaker, Editing by Franklin Paul