Tashkent, Oct. 5 -- Two Americans and a Briton won the 2020 Nobel Prize for Medicine on Monday (October 5) for work in identifying the Hepatitis C virus, which causes cirrhosis and liver cancer.

The discoveries by American scientists Harvey Alter, Charles Rice and British scientist Michael Houghton meant there was now a chance of eradicating the Hepatitis C virus completely, the Nobel assembly at Karolinska Institutet said in a statement upon awarding the prize of 10 million Swedish crowns ($1.1 million).

The World Health Organization estimates 71 million people are infected with hepatitis C globally, which caused approximately 399,000 deaths in 2016.

While the Nobel awards will go ahead as planned this year, they have been overshadowe...