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Phillip and Anthony died just days apart
People living thousands of miles apart with nothing in common are today united in their struggle against coronavirus.
More than three million people around the world have tested positive for the virus since it first emerged in China late last year. Close to 230,000 have died.
There are only a handful of countries that haven’t been touched by the pandemic.
On Thursday, we told you about the lives of seven people in the UK who died on 12 April, the day the country officially surpassed 10,000 hospital deaths.
These are the stories of four other deaths on three continents that also happened that day.
Maria Pollidori was admitted to hospital in central Italy in late February for a stomach cancer operation. Everything seemed to have gone smoothly, and her family looked forward to her return.
But on 9 April they received a call from the hospital saying the 84 year old had tested positive for coronavirus.
Italy is at the epicentre of the global pandemic, recording more coronavirus-related deaths than any other country in the world. The central region of Marche, where Maria and her family live, has recorded thousands of cases.
But Maria’s family had no idea that she had been showing any symptoms.
Three days after they received the call from the hospital, she passed away.
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Her son Pierluigi said the hardest thing was not being able to be close to her “at the time she needed us most”.
Maria’s death was not only felt by her family. As a nurse and midwife of 25 years she was well known in and around the small seaside town of Porto Potenza.
But because of the pandemic, no-one was able to pay their respects to her at a funeral.
It is a story that echoes throughout the country.
Thousands of miles away in the US state of Texas, Phillip Tsai-Brooks and his husband Anthony were both in hospital with Covid-19 on 12 April.
It was love at first sight when the pair were introduced through mutual friends.
They married in 2014 on a cruise ship in San Francisco Bay, and brought Phillip’s widowed mother on their honeymoon to Puerto Rico – as they often did on their much-loved international travels.
In a statement to the BBC, Phillip’s brothers said Phillip and Anthony were able to break barriers, and were accepted as a couple in the city of San Antonio, where they were known for the joy they brought to people’s lives.
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Phillip, one of five brothers, had always dreamed of being a hair stylist and one day opening his own salon. His ambitions were realised when he opened the Extreme Opulence Hair Studio. More recently, he had been teaching others in the profession.
Only child Anthony, known as Tony, spent several years in the US Air Force before working for his local council, helping with budget planning for the city of Live Oak.
A colleague said he was “smarter about city budgets than most people”, and described him as “one of the nicest guys you’ll ever meet”.
The charismatic military veteran would regularly bring sweets into work for the local mayor, dropping them in a jar on her desk, he sai