MADRID, May 12. /TASS/. The coronavirus death toll in Spain has exceeded the number of deaths per year caused by any other disease, the ABC daily newspaper reported on Tuesday.
It noted that based on the data for 2014-2018, an average of 416,000 people died in the country per year, including more than 22,000 patients whose death was caused by malignant bronchial and lung tumors. An average of 18,500 people in Spain lost their lives due to cardiac failure in 12 months, while 17,500 people passed away from dementia and 15,200 died due to heart attacks. Meanwhile, coronavirus has claimed 26,744 lives in the country over the past few months.
Spain is one of the hit hardest countries by the COVID-19 pandemic, with more than 227,000 cases confirmed since the beginning of the outbreak.
In late December 2019, Chinese officials notified the World Health Organization (WHO) about the outbreak of a previously unknown pneumonia in the city of Wuhan, in central China. Since then, cases of the novel coronavirus - named COVID-19 by the WHO - have been reported in every corner of the globe, including Russia.
On March 11, 2020, the WHO declared the coronavirus outbreak a pandemic. According to the latest statistics, over 4,269,000 people have been infected worldwide and more than 287,000 deaths have been reported. In addition, so far, over 1,534,000 individuals have recovered from the illness across the globe.