Overall death toll from COVID-19 exceeds 2M due to vaccine launch

The overall death toll from COVID-19 exceeded 2 million on Friday as dizzyingly developed vaccines spread around the world in a full-scale campaign to defeat the threat.

The landmark was reached just over a year after the coronavirus was first detected in the Chinese city of Wuhan.

The death toll, compiled by Johns Hopkins University, is roughly equal to the population of Brussels, Mecca, Minsk or Vienna. It is roughly equivalent to the population of the Cleveland metropolitan area or the entire state of Nebraska.

While the number is based on figures provided by government agencies around the world, the actual tax is considered to be significantly higher, in part due to inadequate testing and numerous deaths that have been incorrectly attributed to other causes, especially at the beginning of the outbreak. .

It took eight months to hit 1 million dead. It took less than four months after that to reach the next million.

“Behind this terrible number are names and faces – the smile that will now be just a memory, the forever empty chair at the dinner table, the room that echoes the silence of a loved one,” said UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres. He said the tax “was exacerbated by the lack of a coordinated global effort.”

“Science has succeeded, but solidarity has failed,” he said.

In rich countries, including the United States, the United Kingdom, Israel, Canada and Germany, millions of citizens have already received some measure of protection with at least one dose of vaccine developed at a revolutionary rate and quickly authorized for use.

But elsewhere, the immunization actions have just come off the ground. Many experts predict another year of losses and difficulties in places such as Iran, India, Mexico and Brazil, which together account for about a quarter of the world’s deaths.