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Italy could soon exceed the UK’s coronavirus death toll, as it announced on Friday that another 761 people had died after contracting the virus.
Bring the total number of countries COVID-19 63,387 related deaths – close to the UK total of 63,506.
The UK has the highest number of coronavirus deaths in Europe.
Since September, Italy has recorded more than 28,000 coronavirus deaths, including 993 in a single day in early December.
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If Italy surpasses the United Kingdom, it would only be below Mexico, India and the United States in terms of the number of citizens who have died during the pandemic, according to Johns Hopkins University.
The country, which was one of the most affected during the first wave, has the second oldest population in the world, with the average age of those who died with COVID-19 in Italy around 80 years.
Matteo Villa, a researcher at the Institute for International Political Studies, said the Italian government waited too long before imposing restrictions after cases began to rise in September and October, and failed to bolster the country’s health system over the summer.
“If you can act earlier, even a little lighter on the measures, they work better than acting hard a little later or too late,” he said.
“If you look at France and the UK, you can see that Italy fared much worse … and if you look at a comparable population with similar demographics, which is Germany, Italy did much worse.”
Meanwhile, South Korea, a country that has been praised for largely containing its bud, has reported a record increase in daily COVID-19 infections.
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On Saturday it registered another 950 coronavirus cases, bringing its total number of cases to 41,736.
In the last 15 days alone, the country has added 8,900 cases to its total, with the capital Seoul being the hardest hit.
The country relaxed its social distancing restrictions to their lowest level in October, despite warnings from experts that there could be an increase in cases due to colder weather forcing people to stay indoors.
President Moon Jae-in apologized for not being able to contain the outbreak, despite its comparatively low case rate, and called for vigilance saying that South Korea was going through its “last crisis before the arrival of vaccines and treatment.”
