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The total number of Covid-19 infections topped 1 million globally Thursday afternoon, according to Worldometer. Fatalities, tragically, topped 51,000, while documented recoveries are now more than 210,000.

There are several databases available for investors and others to track. Some, including the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention as well as the World Health Organization, lag behind others—including the Johns Hopkins Coronavirus Research Center—which are updated more frequently. The trends and totals, however, closely approximate one another.

Worldometer’s data is as of 2:03 p.m. Eastern time. Johns Hopkins database most recent time stamp is 12:27 p.m. Eastern time.

U.S. cases now top 235,000, and deaths recorded are more than 5,600, according to Worldometer. That compares with about 226,000 cases and 5,300 fatalities reported by Johns Hopkins.

Regardless of the database cited, the numbers are alarming and highlight the need to maintain social distancing. The White House recommends 30 days of distancing to help slow the spread of the disease, up from 15 a few days ago.

Slowing the spread is important so the health-care system isn’t overwhelmed. Ventilator availability for critically ill patients has been an issue in New York. There are about 200,000 ventilators in the U.S.

“Before this situation nobody really gave a second thought to ventilators,” New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo told CNN on March 28. “The possible apex by numerical projections has [New York] needing 140,000 hospital beds and about 40,000 ventilators, which is a very big number that would overwhelm the health-care system.”

The numbers are getting large enough that plotting them on a logarithmic scale is more practical. A log scale is a useful way of illustrating data with a wide range of values, such as the cumulative progression of Covid-19 infections around the globe.

The outbreak continues to fuel stock-market volatility. The Dow Jones Industrial Average dropped 974 points, or 4.4%, on Wednesday. The S&P 500 and Nasdaq Composite also fell 4.4%.

Stocks are posting modest gains Thursday despite historically high jobless claims, but all major U.S. indexes remain down in the range of 20% year to date.

For more Covid-19 information, here’s a link to the CDC website.

Write to Al Root at allen.root@dowjones.com