RIO DE JANEIRO (AP) – The global death toll from the coronavirus reached more than 3 million people Saturday amid repeated setbacks in the global vaccination campaign and a deepening crisis in places like Brazil, India and France.
The number of lives lost, as compiled by Johns Hopkins University, is roughly equal to the population of Kiev, Ukraine; Caracas, Venezuela; or the metropolis of Lisbon, Portugal. It’s bigger than Chicago (2.7 million) and equal to Philadelphia and Dallas combined.
And the actual number is believed to be significantly higher due to possible government concealment and the many cases that were overlooked in the early stages of the outbreak that started in Wuhan, China in late 2019.
When the world passed the bleak 2 million death threshold in January, immunization campaigns had just begun in Europe and the United States. Today, they are ongoing in more than 190 countries, although progress in getting the virus under control varies widely.
While the campaigns in the US and Britain have started and people and businesses are starting to think about life after the pandemic, other places, mostly poorer countries but also some rich ones, are lagging behind in taking guns and new lockdowns and other limitations as virus cases increase.
Worldwide, deaths are on the rise again, averaging around 12,000 a day, and new cases are also on the rise, at more than 700,000 a day.
“This is not the situation we want to have in 16 months in a pandemic, where we have proven control measures,” said Maria Van Kerkhove, one of the leaders of the World Health Organization on COVID-19.
This is not the situation we want in 16 months from a pandemic, where we have proven control measures.
–Maria Van Kerkhove, World Health Organization
In Brazil, where the number of deaths rises to about 3,000 a day, accounting for a quarter of the lives lost worldwide in recent weeks, a WHO official has likened the crisis to a “furious inferno.” A more contagious variant of the virus is raging across the country.
The slow rollout of vaccines has crushed Brazilians’ pride over their own history of conducting massive vaccination campaigns that the developing world has envied.
On directions from President Jair Bolsonaro, who has compared the virus to little more than a flu, his health ministry gambled on a single vaccine for months and ignored other producers. When bottlenecks came to light, it was too late to consume large quantities on time.
Seeing so many patients suffering and dying alone in her hospital in Rio de Janeiro prompted nurse Lidiane Melo to take desperate measures.
In the early days of the pandemic, when patients clamored for comfort she was too busy to offer, Melo filled two rubber gloves with warm water, buttoned them up, and clasped a patient’s hand for a loving simulate touch.
Some have called the practice the “hand of God,” and it is now the scorching picture of a nation struggling with a medical emergency with no end in sight.
“Patients cannot receive visits. Unfortunately, that is not possible. So it is a way to provide psychological support, to be there together while the patient holds his hand,” said Melo. She added, “And this year it’s getting worse, the severity of patients is 1,000 times greater.”
This situation is also dire in India, where the number of cases peaked in February after weeks of steady decline, which took the authorities by surprise. In a wave driven by variants of the virus, India saw more than 180,000 new infections in a 24-hour period last week, bringing the total number of cases to more than 13.9 million.
The problems that India overcame last year continue to haunt health officials. Only 178 fans were free on Wednesday afternoon in New Delhi, a city of 29 million inhabitants, where 13,000 new infections were reported the day before.
The challenges facing India reverberate beyond its borders as the country is the largest supplier of injections to COVAX, the UN-sponsored program to distribute vaccines to poorer parts of the world. Last month, India said it would suspend vaccine exports until the spread of the virus in the country slows.
The WHO recently described the supply situation as precarious. According to one estimate, 60 countries may no longer receive photos by June. To date, COVAX has delivered approximately 40 million doses to more than 100 countries, enough to cover barely 0.25% of the world’s population.
Globally, about 87% of the 700 million doses dispensed have been released in wealthy countries. While 1 in 4 people in rich countries has received a vaccine, in poor countries it is 1 in more than 500.
In recent days, the US and some European countries have delayed the use of Johnson & Johnson’s COVID-19 vaccine, while authorities are investigating extremely rare but dangerous blood clots. AstraZeneca’s vaccine has also been hit with delays and limitations due to coagulation anxiety.
Another concern: poorer countries rely on vaccines from China and Russia, which some scientists believe offer less protection than those from Pfizer, Moderna and AstraZeneca.
Last week, the director of China’s Center for Disease Control and Prevention acknowledged that the country’s vaccines offer low protection and said officials are considering combining them with other injections to improve their effectiveness.
In the U.S.
In the US, where more than 560,000 lives have been lost, accounting for more than 1 in 6 of the world’s COVID-19 deaths, hospital admissions and deaths have dropped, businesses are reopening and life is starting to return to something that is almost normal in several states. . The number of Americans claiming unemployment benefits fell to 576,000 last week, a low after COVID-19.
But progress is patchy and new hot spots – Michigan in particular – have flared up in recent weeks. Still, deaths in the US have dropped to about 700 a day on average, down from a mid-January peak of about 3,400.
In Europe, countries are hardest hit by a more contagious variant that has ravaged Britain for the first time and pushed the continent’s COVID-19-related death toll to above 1 million.
Nearly 6,000 critically ill patients are being treated in French intensive care units, figures not seen since the first wave a year ago.
Dr. Marc Leone, chief of intensive care at North Hospital in Marseille, said exhausted frontline workers hailed as heroes at the start of the pandemic now feel alone and hope that new school closures and other restrictions will do so. help contain the virus for the next few weeks.
“There is exhaustion, more bad mood. You have to be careful because there are a lot of conflicts,” he said. “We will give everything we have to get through these 15 days in the best possible way.”
Goodman reported from Miami and Cheng reported from London. AP writers John Leicester in Paris and Aniruddha Ghosal in New Delhi contributed to this report.
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