Global COVID-19 deaths top 3m: how does it compare to other epidemics?

The global death toll from COVID-19 passed three million on Saturday, with the pandemic already having killed more people than most other viral epidemics of the 20th and 21st centuries.

But there have been notable exceptions. The post-World War I Spanish Flu wiped out 50 million people, according to some estimates. And over the decades AIDS has killed 33 million.

Here are some comparisons:

Flu epidemics In 2009, the H1N1 virus, or swine flu, caused a global pandemic and left an official death toll of 18,500.

This was later revised upwards by The Lancet medical journal to between 151,700 and 575,400 dead.

That brings it close to seasonal flu, which accounts for between 290,000 and 650,000 deaths worldwide every year, according to the World Health Organization.

In the 20th century, two major non-seasonal flu pandemics -- Asian flu in 1957-1958 and Hong Kong flu in 1968-1970 -- each killed around one million people, according to counts carried out afterwards.

The greatest catastrophe of modern pandemics to date, the flu pandemic of 1918-1919 also known as Spanish flu, wiped out some 50 million people according to research published in the 2000s.

Other viral epidemics 

The death...