World nears 6 million deaths from COVID, though true total probably far higher – experts
The COVID-19 pandemic is nearing a sobering global death toll of 6 million, figures showed Sunday.
A number of analyses show the milestone may have long since been reached.
As of midday Sunday, the total compiled by Johns Hopkins University stood at 5,998,584. In the U.S. it’s approaching 1 million, the most deaths of any country.
The total served as a grim reminder of the pandemic’s continuing presence around the globe. Even as many countries have now moved from an emergency response to living-with-it mode, others are still grappling with new outbreaks, high death rates and vaccination lags.
In Ukraine and surrounding countries, refugees fleeing from the low-vaxrate country arriving in Poland and other nations on packed trains were potentially spreading the virus further, The Associated Press noted. The countries they are fleeing to — Hungary, Romania and other Eastern European countries in addition to Poland — have their own high death rates.
In Pacific Island nations that had so far escaped unscathed, infections have now cropped up, the data shows.
But around the world, those who are dying have been unvaccinated; in Hong Kong, for instance, deaths are soaring, AP noted.
Tonga saw its first COVID cases from aid workers arriving to help clean up after a massive volcanic eruption and tsunami earlier this year; with a high vaccination rate, they have recorded no COVID deaths, AP reported.
“This is a disease of the unvaccinated — look what is happening in Hong Kong right now, the health system is being overwhelmed,” Tikki Pang, a visiting professor at the National University of Singapore’s medical school and co-chair of the Asia Pacific Immunization Coalition, told the AP. “The large majority of the deaths and the severe cases are in the unvaccinated, vulnerable segment of the population.”
There are a number of reasons for low vaccination rates, and they vary by country, AP reported.
In some countries, limited supplies are the issue, while in others that’s made worse by factors including health care systems that can’t handle vaccine storage requirements; the unpredictability of when supply will be delivered, and hesitancy by those eligible for the shot.
In Africa, by the middle of last month less than 5% of those countries’ populations were vaccinated, the World Health
Organization’s regional Africa office told AP. Yemen, Syria, Haiti and Papua New Guinea area also low in vaccination rate.
“The main problem among countries with low vaccination rates is poor infrastructure to distribute shots,” Dina Borzekowski, director of the Global Health Initiative at the University of Maryland, told AP. “What is absent are best practices to get vaccines to populations who typically live without safely managed sanitation systems or reliable electricity.”
As the world strives to get everyone vaccinated — with richer countries finally easing up as booster vaccines are administered and their rates drop — the 6 million death mark was probably reached months before the official count logged it, according to numerous analyses.
Vaccine inequity continues to be the major sticking point, and one that threatens everyone, Doctors Without Borders said in a recent statement.
“Though more than half of all Americans are now fully immunized against COVID-19, fewer than six percent of people living in low-income countries have received even a single dose of the vaccine,” the organization said. “This stark inequity in access to vaccines is a direct threat to people at high risk of contracting COVID-19, and is enabling new virus variants to take hold.”
There is a probability that deaths directly attributable to COVID are between 14 million and 23.5 million already, the AP reported.
“Confirmed deaths represent a fraction of the true number of deaths due to COVID, mostly because of limited testing, and challenges in the attribution of the cause of death,” Edouard Mathieu, head of data for the Our World in Data portal, told AP. “In some, mostly rich, countries that fraction is high and the official tally can be considered to be fairly accurate, but in others it is highly underestimated.”
The world hit 1 million official coronavirus deaths seven months after the pandemic was declared, and the second million four months later, AP noted. Since then every three months another million people have died; 2 million more have perished since the end of October 2021.
“Every dot is a heartbreak for us,” Beth Blauer, associate vice provost for public sector innovation at Johns Hopkins University, and the data lead for its coronavirus resource center, told the Daily News of the data points she and her colleagues have been recording on Johns Hopkins’ infamous coronavirus case map for the past two years. “These aren’t just numbers.”