Washington, April 5 (RHC)-- The worldwide death toll from coronavirus has topped 60,000, according to a tally maintained by Johns Hopkins University.  The virus passed the grim benchmark on Saturday, just two days after fatalities reached 50,000.  More than 1.1 million people worldwide have been infected by the illness, the university has reported.

The increase comes as the United States and Europe struggle to contain the virus.  The UK death toll rose to 4,313 on Saturday, up twenty percent from the day before.  In the U.S., there are more than 278,000 confirmed cases, with over 7,000 dead.

Italy and Spain lead the world in COVID-19 deaths, however.  Nearly 15,000 people have died in Italy, while almost 12,000 have perished in Spain.  The two countries combined account for just under a quarter of all the world’s 1.1 million confirmed cases.  Around half of the world's population have been instructed by their governments to stay indoors as part of a global effort to halt the spread of the illness.   

However, as whole cities and nations lock down to slow the spread, the economic cost of the shutdown is becoming apparent.  Ten million new unemployment claims in the last two weeks broke records in the US, global markets have tanked, and the airline industry has effectively ceased to exist.  On Friday, the Philippines-based Asian Development Bank predicted that the pandemic will wipe $4 trillion from the global economy this year.