MEXICO CITY (AP) – The global COVID-19 death toll reached more than 2 million Friday, crossing the threshold amid such an immense but uneven vaccine rollout that there is real hope in some countries to overcome the outbreak, while in other less developed parts of the world, it seems like a distant dream.
The narcotic figure was reached just over a year after the coronavirus was first discovered in the Chinese city of Wuhan. The number of deaths, compiled by Johns Hopkins University, is roughly equal to the number of residents of Brussels, Mecca, Minsk or Vienna. It is roughly equivalent to the Cleveland metropolitan area or the entire state of Nebraska.
“There have been an awful lot of deaths,” said Dr. Ashish Jha, a pandemic expert and dean of Brown University’s School of Public Health. At the same time, he said, “our scientific community has also done an extraordinary job.”
In wealthy countries, including the United States, Britain, Israel, Canada and Germany, millions of citizens have already received some measure of protection with at least one dose of vaccine that has been developed at revolutionary speed and quickly approved for use.
But elsewhere, immunization drives have barely taken off. Many experts predict another year of loss and deprivation in places like Iran, India, Mexico and Brazil, which together account for about a quarter of the world’s deaths.
“As a country, as a society, as citizens, we have not understood,” lamented Israel Gomez, a Mexico City paramedic who carried COVID-19 patients by ambulance for months, desperate for empty hospital beds. “We have not understood that this is not a game, that this really exists.”
Mexico, a country of 130 million people, has received just 500,000 doses of vaccine and barely half of that into the arms of health workers.
This is in stark contrast to the situation of its richer northern neighbor. Despite early delays, hundreds of thousands of people roll up their sleeves every day in the United States, where the virus has killed about 390,000 people, by far the highest toll in any country.
According to the University of Oxford, a total of more than 35 million doses of various COVID-19 vaccines have been administered around the world.
While long queues, inadequate budgets, and a patchwork of national and local approaches hamper the urge to vaccinate in rich countries, obstacles are much greater in poorer countries, which have weak health systems, crumbling transportation networks, deep-seated corruption and a lack of reliable electricity to keep vaccines cold. enough to keep.
Also, most of the COVID-19 vaccine doses in the world have already been picked up by rich countries. COVAX, a UN-backed project to deliver shots to developing countries, is short of vaccine, money and logistical assistance.
As a result, the World Health Organization chief scientist warned that it is highly unlikely that herd immunity – which would require at least 70% of the Earth to be vaccinated – will be achieved this year. As the disaster has shown, it is not enough to extinguish the virus in a few places.
“Even if it happens in a few pockets, in a few countries, it won’t protect people all over the world,” said Dr. Soumya Swaminathan this week.
Health experts also fear that if the shots aren’t spread wide and fast enough, it could give the virus time to mutate and beat the vaccine – “my nightmare scenario,” as Jha put it.
UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said the 2 million milestone “has been exacerbated by the lack of a globally coordinated effort.” He added, “Science has succeeded, but solidarity has failed.”
Meanwhile, in Wuhan, where the plague was discovered in late 2019, a global team of researchers led by WHO arrived on Thursday on a politically sensitive mission to investigate the origin of the virus, which is believed to have spread to humans through wild animals. Scattered.
The Chinese city of 11 million inhabitants is buzzing again, with little sign that it was once the epicenter of the catastrophe, locked up for 76 days with more than 3,800 dead.
“We are not scared or worried as in the past,” said Qin Qiong, a noodle shop owner. “We now live a normal life. I take the metro every day to work in the store. … Except our customers, who have to wear masks, everything else is the same. “
It took eight months to hit 1 million dead, but less than four months after that to hit the next million.
While the death toll is based on figures provided by government agencies around the world, the actual number of lives lost is believed to be significantly higher, in part due to insufficient testing and the many fatalities that have been inaccurately attributed to other causes, especially in the beginning of the period. outbreak.
“What was never on the horizon is that so many of the dead would be in the richest countries in the world,” said Dr. Bharat Pankhania, an infectious disease expert at the British University of Exeter. “That the richest countries in the world would manage so badly is just shocking.”
In both rich and poor countries, the crisis has devastated economies, left masses of people unemployed and plunged many into poverty.
In Europe, where more than a quarter of the world’s deaths have occurred, strict lockdowns and curfews have been reintroduced to prevent a resurgence of the virus, and a new variant believed to be more contagious is circulating in Great Britain and other countries. , as well as the US.
Even in some of the richest countries, vaccination coverage has been slower than expected. France, with Europe’s second-largest economy and more than 69,000 known virus deaths, will take years, not months, to vaccinate its 53 million adults unless it speeds up its rollout sharply, hampered by shortages, red tape and a high suspicion of the vaccines.
Still, in places like Poissy, a working-class town west of Paris, the first shots of the Pfizer formula were received with relief and a sense of light at the end of the pandemic tunnel.
“We have been living indoors for almost a year now. It’s not life, ”said Maurice Lachkar, a retired 78-year-old acupuncturist who was put on the vaccination priority list because of his diabetes and age. “If I catch the virus, I’ll be done.”
Maurice and his wife, Nicole, who were also vaccinated, said they may even allow themselves hugs with their two children and four grandchildren, whom they have only seen from a socially safe distance once or twice since the pandemic hit.
“It’s going to be liberating,” he said.
All over the developing world, the images look strikingly alike: rows and rows of graves being dug, hospitals pushed to their limits and medical workers dying for lack of protective equipment.
In Peru, which has the highest COVID-19 death rate in Latin America, hundreds of health workers went on strike this week to demand better wages and working conditions in a country where 230 doctors have died from the disease. In Brazil, authorities in the largest city in the Amazon rainforest planned to release hundreds of patients due to a dwindling supply of oxygen tanks, which left some people dying at home.
In Honduras, anesthetist Dr. Cesar Umaña treats 25 patients by telephone at home because hospitals do not have the capacity and equipment.
“This is complete chaos,” he said.
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Cheng reported from Toronto, Leicester from Poissy, France and Goodman from Miami. Associated Press authors Victoria Milko in Jakarta, Indonesia, and David Biller in Rio de Janeiro contributed to this report, along with AP video journalist Sam McNeil in Wuhan, China.