The number of deaths linked to the novel coronavirus has reached 100,000, as the tally of cases passed 1.6 million, according to Reuters.

The toll has been accelerating at a daily rate of between 6 per cent and 10pc over the past week, and there were almost 7,300 deaths globally reported on Thursday.

The death toll now compares with that of London’s Great Plague in the mid-1660s, which killed an estimated 100,000 people, about a third of the city’s population at the time.

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