A viral march across the planet

ON a Thursday night in early January, the disease that would become known as COVID-19 claimed its first victim, a 61-year-old man who succumbed to the newly identified coronavirus in the city of Wuhan, in the People’s Republic of China.

Nine months later, the pandemic took its millionth life. And while the vagaries of record-keeping mean we may never know who that victim was, the fact remains: COVID has killed a million people.

Tens of millions of things undone. Daughters and sons unborn, works of genius uncreated. Pieces of communities — excised. Entire residential complexes filled with older people — ravaged.

Human contribution melted away, with no way of ever knowing or chronicling what was lost. Accounting for what’s missing when people die is never an easy task; now it is one multiplied by an entire million.

A new Associated Press interactive map of the coronavirus’ spread — represented by the lives it has claimed — blends data and geography in a way that forces us to see what has happened to the world. And what is still happening to it.

Like so many things in the world, it started small. At first, the map shows only one splash of colour: China, the place where the coronavirus silently began its march.

As it began to move around, the map evolved. Month by month, week by week, day by day, the coronavirus spread. Pandemic was declared. Hospitals girded. Cities and countries, shut down. The world changed so fast that its people could barely keep up.

Picture: AP Photo/Jerome Delay, File In this August 5, 2020 picture recently filled graves of people who died from COVID-19 are seen in the Olifantsveil Cemetery outside Johannesburg, South Africa.

Picture: REUTERS/Abdel Hadi Ramadi British artist Sacha Jafri, who partnered with UNICEF and UNESCO looking to raise $30 million from selling a painting and giving them to children’s charities, stands on the giant canvas at The Atlantis hotel in Dubai, United Arab Emirates on September 20, 2020.