The global death toll from the coronavirus pandemic has topped 900,000 since the respiratory disease first appeared in China last year, according to an AFP tally.
As the fatalities climbed, US President Donald Trump admitted he had tried to minimise the seriousness of the Covid-19 threat at the start of the pandemic, in audio recordings released yesterday from interviews with veteran journalist Bob Woodward. "I wanted to always play it down," Trump told Mr Woodward on 19 March, according to a CNN preview of the book "Rage", due to be published this month. "I still like playing it down, because I don't want to create a panic," he said in the recorded conversation with Woodward.