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April 19, 2021

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Global deaths from COVID-19 pass 3 million

Source: AP | 00:00 UTC+8 April 19, 2021 | Print Edition

The global death toll from the coronavirus topped a staggering 3 million people on Saturday amid repeated setbacks in the worldwide vaccination campaign and a deepening crisis in places such as Brazil, India and France.

The number of lives lost, as compiled by Johns Hopkins University, is about equal to the population of Kyiv, Ukraine or Lisbon, Portugal. It is bigger than the US city Chicago of 2.7 million people.

When the world back in January passed the bleak threshold of 2 million deaths, immunization drives had just started in Europe and the United States.

Today, they are under way in more than 190 countries, though progress in bringing the virus under control varies widely.

While the campaigns in the US and Britain have hit their stride and people and businesses there are beginning to contemplate life after the pandemic, other places, mostly poorer countries, are lagging behind in putting shots in arms and have imposed new lockdowns and other restrictions as cases soar.

Worldwide, deaths are on the rise again, running at around 12,000 per day on average, and new cases are climbing too, eclipsing 700,000 a day.

“This is not the situation we want to be in 16 months into a pandemic, where we have proven control measures,” said Maria Van Kerkhove, one of the World Health Organization’s leaders on COVID-19.

In Brazil, where deaths are running at about 3,000 per day, accounting for one-quarter of the lives lost worldwide in recent weeks, the crisis has been likened to a “raging inferno” by one WHO official.

A more contagious variant of the virus has been rampaging across the country.

As cases surge, hospitals are running out of critical sedatives. As a result, there have been reports of some doctors diluting what supplies remain and even tying patients to their beds while breathing tubes are pushed down their throats.

In Europe, countries are feeling the brunt of a more contagious variant that first ravaged Britain and has pushed the continent’s COVID-19-related death toll beyond 1 million.

Close to 6,000 gravely ill patients are being treated in French critical-care units, numbers not seen since the first wave a year ago.

India saw over 180,000 new infections in one 24-hour span during the past week, bringing the total number of cases to over 13.9 million.

The challenges facing India reverberate beyond its borders since the country is the biggest supplier of shots to COVAX, the United Nations-sponsored program to distribute vaccines to poorer parts of the world.

Last month, India said it would suspend vaccine exports until the virus’s spread inside the country slows.

To date, COVAX has delivered about 40 million doses to more than 100 countries, enough to cover barely 0.25 percent of the world’s population.

Globally, about 87 percent of the 700 million doses dispensed have been given out in rich countries.

While 1 in 4 people in wealthy nations have received a vaccine, in poor countries the figure is 1 in more than 500.

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