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Global coronavirus cases surpassed 1 million on Thursday with more than 52,000 deaths as the pandemic further exploded in the United States and the death toll climbed in Spain and Italy, according to a Reuters tally of official data. Italy had the most deaths, more than 13,900, followed by Spain. The United States had the most confirmed cases of any country, more than 240,000, the data showed. Since the virus was first recorded in China late last year, the pandemic has spread around the world, prompting governments to close businesses, ground airlines and order hundreds of millions of people to stay at home to try to slow the contagion. (Shumaker and Wallis, 4/2)

The U.S. has 236,339 reported cases of the virus, representing just under a quarter of the world-wide figures. That’s nearly twice the number of reported cases in Italy, the next-highest country, although the rates of illness and death might be underreported there and in other countries. Health experts in the U.S. have voiced concerns about the accuracy of coronavirus testing, believing nearly one in three infected with the illness is testing negative. Between 8 p.m. Wednesday and the same time Thursday, 850 people in the U.S. died from Covid-19, according to a Wall Street Journal analysis of data from Johns Hopkins University, bringing the nation’s total to more than 5,900. (Calfas, Dvorak and El-Fekki, 4/2)

The figures were another bleak milestone in the pandemic that has forced the lockdown of entire countries and brought economies to a shuddering halt. Still, the true numbers of deaths and infections are believed to be much higher, in part because of differences in counting practices, many mild cases that have gone unreported, testing shortages, and suspicions of a cover-up in some countries. (4/2)

Wuhan’s first known virus patient begins developing symptoms on Dec. 1, according to a paper published Jan. 24 in The Lancet medical journal. On Dec. 16, doctors at the Central Hospital of Wuhan send samples from another patient with a persistent fever for lab testing. Those results show a SARS-like virus and on Dec. 30 Ai Fen, the head of the hospital’s ER department, posts a picture of a lab report on Chinese social media, which is re-posted and circulated by several other doctors. They’re reprimanded by local police for “spreading rumors.” (Chang, 4/2)