Covid death toll passes 3M as India cases surge

PARIS, France (AFP) — The global Covid-19 death toll passed three million on Saturday as the pandemic speeds up despite vaccination campaigns, leading countries like India to impose new lockdowns to fight spiralling infection numbers.

It is the latest grim milestone since the novel coronavirus first surfaced in central China in December 2019 and went on to infect more than 139 million people, leaving billions more under crippling lockdowns and ravaging the global economy.

An average of more than 12,000 deaths were recorded globally every day in the past week, shooting the overall toll past three million on Saturday, according to an AFP tally.

For comparison, three million people is more than the population of Jamaica or Armenia — and three times the death toll of the Iran-Iraq war, which raged from 1980 to 1988.

While the pandemic is showing no sign of slowing down, like for instance, the 829,596 new infections reported worldwide on Friday is the highest number yet, according to AFP’s tally.

The daily average of 731,000 cases registered over the last week is also close to being a record.

India’s capital New Delhi went into a weekend lockdown Saturday as the world’s second-most populous nation recorded 234,000 new cases and 1,341 deaths.

South Asian ‘wake-up call’

India now has three times the daily cases of the United States, the world’s worst-hit nation, and families are clamouring for drugs and hospital beds.

Some doctors say they are alarmed at how many young people are now getting seriously ill — like Raj Karan, who got sick while campaigning for elections in the northern city of Luckno. The 38-year-old died soon after.

“I am devastated... I could only see him via a video call,” his friend, Ajay Singh Yadav, told AFP.

Hopes that South Asian countries might have seen the worst of the pandemic have been dashed, with India recording over two million new cases this month alone and Bangladesh and Pakistan imposing new shutdowns.

Udaya Regmi of the International Red Cross said the “truly frightening” South Asian surge was a “wake-up call to the world.”

Richer countries that have waged mass inoculation efforts have seen their virus numbers plummet.

Britain, which has given 60 percent of the population at least one vaccination dose, now records around 30 deaths a day — down from 1,200 in late January.

An average of more than 12,000 deaths were recorded globally every day in the past week, shooting the overall toll past three million on Saturday.

In Brazil, the country with the third-highest death toll in the world, night shifts have been added to several cemeteries as diggers work around the clock to bury the dead.

“We try not to get upset in our work, but it is sad, it is a lot of people,” said one gravedigger in Vila Formosa, the largest cemetery in Latin America.

More than 365,000 people have died from Covid-19 in Brazil.

Despite the high infection rates there however, the government of Brazil’s most populous state Sao Paulo announced it would allow businesses and places of worship to reopen from Sunday.

PHOTOGRAPHS COURTESY OF SBG SENATOR Christopher ‘Bong’ Go, who is also chair of the Senate Committee on Health, sincerely thanked the second batch of medical frontliners from the Visayas who volunteered to be deployed to overwhelmed hospitals and health care facilities in the National Capital Region following the rising number of Covid-19 cases in the region, following a ceremonial send-off was held over the weekend in Cebu City for 30 nurses from Central Visayas, where 20 nurses will be assigned to the National Center for Mental Health in Mandaluyong City, while the rest will be deployed to the Las Piñas General Hospital and Satellite Trauma Center. To address the growing need for human medical resources, the Senator had earlier appealed to health workers in non-critical areas to help boost the number of medical frontliners serving in critical areas. The Senator reaffirmed that medical frontliners remain the top priority of the government’s vaccination drive, as he advised them to get vaccinated when offered the opportunity in order to ensure they are adequately protected against the virus.

JOAO PAULO GUIMARAES/AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE AFTER a patient suffering from Covid-19 receives oxygen, a medical worker reacts at a makeshift hospital in a remote community on the coasts of the Moju River in Para state, Brazil.