Grim milestone in pandemic as global death toll passes three million

THE global death toll from coronavirus topped three million at the weekend, amid repeated setbacks in the worldwide vaccination campaign and a deepening crisis in countries such as Brazil, India and France.

The number of lives lost, as compiled by Johns Hopkins University in the US, is about equal to the population of Lisbon or Kiev.

And the true number is believed to be significantly higher because of possible government concealment and the many cases overlooked in the early stages of the outbreak, which began in Wuhan, China, at the end of 2019.

In January when the world passed the grim milestone of two million deaths, immunisation 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 the UK have hit their stride and people and businesses there are beginning to contemplate life after the pandemic, other places, mostly poorer countries but some rich ones as well, are lagging behind in and have imposed new lockdowns and other restrictions as virus cases soar.

Worldwide, deaths are on the rise again, running at about 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 Organisation’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.