Global COVID-19 deaths exceed an astonishing 3 million

Rio de Janeiro — The global death toll from the coronavirus surpassed a staggering 3 million on Saturday amid repeated recessions in global vaccination campaigns and serious crises in places such as Brazil, India and France. I did.

The number of lives lost, compiled by Johns Hopkins University, is about the same as the population of Kiev in Ukraine. Venezuela, Caracas; or the big cities Lisbon, Portugal. It is larger than Chicago (2.7 million) and is equivalent to the combination of Philadelphia and Dallas.

And the actual numbers are believed to be significantly higher due to the possibility of government concealment and the many incidents that were overlooked in the early stages of the outbreak that began in Wuhan, China at the end of 2019.

Immunization promotion was just beginning in Europe and the United States when the world crossed the severe threshold of 2 million deaths in January. Currently, it is underway in more than 190 countries, but progress in controlling the virus is very different.

While campaigns in the United States and the United Kingdom are gaining momentum and people and businesses are beginning to think about life after a pandemic, elsewhere, mostly poor countries, but some wealthy countries are also shooting weapons. As we are lagging behind and the number of cases of viruses we are imposing increases, new lockdowns and other restrictions will occur.

Globally, deaths are rising again, averaging about 12,000 per day, and new cases are increasing by more than 700,000 per day.

Maria Wankelhoff, one of the leaders of the World Health Organization at COVID-19, said:

Brazil kills about 3,000 people a day, accounting for a quarter of the lives lost worldwide in recent weeks. This crisis is likened to a “furious hell” by a WHO employee. More contagious variants of the virus are widespread throughout the country.

As the number of cases surges, hospitals are running out of important sedatives. As a result, some doctors have reported diluting the remaining supplies and tying the patient to the bed while the respiratory tract is pushed down into the throat.

The slow deployment of vaccines shattered Brazilian pride in the history of Brazilians who carried out large-scale vaccination campaigns that were envy of developing countries.

Inspired by President Jair Bolsonaro, who likened the virus to the flu, his Ministry of Health made a big bet on a single vaccine for months, ignoring other producers. When the bottleneck occurred, it was too late to get the mass in time.

After seeing so many patients suffering and dying alone in a hospital in Rio de Janeiro, nurse Lydia Nemero began to take desperate steps.

In the early days of the pandemic, the patient was too busy to seek comfort that he couldn’t provide, so Melo put warm water in two rubber gloves, knotted them, and squeezed them around the patient’s hands to simulate a loving touch. I did.

Some have named this practice the “Hand of God,” but it is now an image of the burning of a country involved in an endless medical emergency.

“Patients can’t accept visitors. Sadly, there’s no way. So it’s a way to provide psychological support and you’re there with the patient holding your hand,” Melo said. Said. She added: “And this year it gets worse, and the severity of the patient is 1,000 times higher.”

The situation was equally dire in India, with a surge in incidents in February after a steady decline for several weeks, which surprised authorities. In the surge caused by viral variants, India has seen more than 180,000 new infections in the past 24 hours in the past week, with a total of more than 13.9 million cases.

The problems India overcame last year are returning to plague health authorities. Only 178 ventilators were free in the 29 million city of New Delhi on Wednesday afternoon, with 13,000 new infections reported the day before.

The challenges facing India are echoing across borders, as India is the largest supplier of shots to COVAX, a UN-sponsored program to distribute vaccines to the poorer parts of the world. .. India announced last month that it would stop exporting vaccines until the spread of the virus slowed down.

WHO recently stated that supply conditions are volatile. According to one estimate, up to 60 countries may not receive any more shots until June. To date, COVAX has delivered approximately 40 million doses to more than 100 countries, sufficient to cover 0.25% of the world’s population.

Globally, approximately 87% of the 700 million doses dispensed are administered in developed countries. In rich countries, 1 in 4 people are vaccinated, while in poor countries, 1 in 500 people.

Recently, the United States and some European countries have withheld the use of Johnson & Johnson’s COVID-19 vaccine, and authorities are investigating a very rare but dangerous blood clot. AstraZeneca vaccines are also suffering from delays and limitations due to fear of coagulation.

Another concern: Poor countries rely on vaccines manufactured by China and Russia. Some scientists believe it is less protective than the vaccines produced by Pfizer, Moderna, and AstraZeneca.

Last week, the director of the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention acknowledged that national vaccines provide low protection and authorities are considering mixing with other shots to improve their effectiveness. It was.

In the United States, where more than 560,000 lives have been lost, more than one-sixth of the world’s COVID-19 deaths, hospitalizations and deaths have declined, businesses have resumed, and lives are normal in some states I’m starting to get closer. .. The number of Americans applying for unemployment benefits plummeted to 576,000 last week, the lowest after COVID-19.

But progress is mottled, and new hotspots (especially Michigan) have skyrocketed in recent weeks. Still, deaths in the United States have fallen to about 700 per day on average, plummeting from a peak of about 3,400 in mid-January.

In Europe, countries feel they are bearing the brunt of a more contagious subspecies that first hit the United Kingdom, with more than one million COVID-19-related deaths on the continent.

Nearly 6,000 seriously ill patients are being treated in a French critical care unit, a number that has not been seen since the first wave a year ago.

Dr. Mark Leone, head of the intensive care unit at the North Hospital of Marseille, said the exhausted frontline staff, who were blessed as heroes at the start of the pandemic, are now feeling lonely, closing new schools and more. Limits will help control the virus in the coming weeks.

“I have fatigue, a worse temper. There are so many conflicts that I have to step on carefully,” he said. “We will do everything we can to survive the last 15 days.”

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Goodman reported from Miami and Chen from London. Paris AP writer Jon Lester and New Delhi’s Aniludda Gosal contributed to this report.