adminNEW YORK. – The global death toll from COVID-19 has eclipsed four million as the crisis increasingly becomes a race between the vaccine and the highly contagious Delta variant.
The tally of lives lost over the past year and a half, as compiled from official sources by Johns Hopkins University, is about equal to the number of people killed in battle in all of the world’s wars since 1982, according to estimates from the Peace Research Institute Oslo.
The toll is three times the number of people killed in traffic accidents around the globe every year. It is about equal to the population of Los Angeles or the nation of Georgia. It is close to 50 percent the population of New York City.
“Many of us know this loss directly and feel its pain”, said UN Secretary-General António Guterres. “We mourn mothers and fathers who gave guidance, sons and daughters who inspired us, grandmothers and grandfathers who shared wisdom, colleagues and friends who lifted our lives.”
He said that while vaccines “offer a ray of hope” most of the world lagged behind: “The virus is outpacing vaccine distribution. This pandemic is clearly far from over; more than half its victims died this year. Many millions more are at risk if the virus is allowed to spread like wildfire.” Even then, it is widely believed to be an undercount because of overlooked cases, or deliberate concealment.
With the advent of the vaccine, deaths per day have plummeted to about 7 900, after topping out at more than 18 000 a day in January.
But in recent weeks, the mutant Delta version of the virus – first identified in India – has set off alarms around the world, spreading rapidly even in vaccination success stories like the US, the UK, and Israel.
The UK, in fact, recorded a one-day total this week of more than 30 000 new infections for the first time since January, even as the government prepares to lift all remaining lockdown restrictions in England later this month.
Other countries have reimposed preventive measures, and authorities are rushing to step up the campaign to dispense shots.
At the same time, the disaster has exposed the gap between the haves and the have-nots, with vaccination drives barely getting started in Africa and other desperately poor corners of the world because of extreme shortages of shots. – Al Jazeera
Online Reporter