April 10, 2020 / COLIN DWYER
Just over a week ago, the worldwide death toll linked to the coronavirus stood at around 50,000 — a staggering sum for a virus that was still largely unknown to the world at the start of the year.
Now, that death toll has nearly doubled and is nearing 100,000 combined deaths from the respiratory disease known as COVID-19. As of Friday morning ET, data compiled by Johns Hopkins University showed the number of confirmed cases worldwide at more than 1.6 million and the global death toll at just over 97,000 — about 7,000 more deaths, in other words, than the number reported Thursday. 
A handful of Western European countries — particularly Italy, the United States, Spain, France and the United Kingdom — so far have felt the brunt of the disease’s deadly effects, combining to make up roughly half the global death toll.
But nearly every country in the world has reported at least one confirmed case of the virus within its borders. That includes some nations with debilitated health infrastructures, such as civil war-ravaged Yemen and Syria, where health authorities and humanitarian activists fear conditions are ripe for the coronavirus’s spread.