More than two million people lost their lives in the Covid-19 pandemic worldwide, with the United Nations Secretary-General, António Guterres, lamenting the impact of the “vicious virus”.
“Our world has reached a heartbreaking milestone,” announced Guterres on Friday in a video marking the moment.
“Behind this impressive number are names and faces: the smile is now just a memory, the forever empty seat at the dinner table, the room that echoes with the silence of a loved one,” he added, calling for greater global solidarity for finance vaccination efforts and urging citizens to adhere to containment measures, such as physical distance and masks.
Data from Johns Hopkins University showed that Covid’s last milestone was reached on Friday, with an average of 11,900 daily deaths recorded in 2021 so far, according to Reuters – representing someone who currently dies every eight seconds because of Covid.
The global death toll reached one million in late September, nine months after the new coronavirus was first detected in the Chinese city of Wuhan. Disturbingly, it took just over three months for that number to double, with some of the hardest hit countries – including the US, Brazil, Mexico and the UK – witnessing an increase in infections and deaths.
“What was never on the horizon is that many of the deaths would happen in the richest countries in the world,” said Dr. Bharat Pankhania, an infectious disease specialist at the University of Exeter. “That the richest countries in the world manage so poorly is just shocking.”
The United States has the highest number of official deaths in the world and, with more than 386,000 deaths, is responsible for one in four deaths recorded worldwide every day.
The next most affected countries are Brazil, with more than 207,000 deaths; India with 152,000; Mexico with 138,000; and the United Kingdom with more than 86,000.
Together, these five countries contribute to almost 50% of all Covid-19 deaths in the world, but represent only 27% of the global population, Reuters reported.
Europe, the most affected region in the world, has reported more than 615,000 deaths to date and accounts for almost 31% of all Covid-related deaths globally.
Infection numbers are also skyrocketing in countries like Mexico, which recorded a record 21,366 new infections on Friday, about double the daily rate of increase just a week ago. Brazil, where the city of Manaus was running out of oxygen to treat Covid-19 patients, recorded 69,198 new infections in the past 24 hours.
China, where the disease was first detected, said 130 new cases were reported on Friday, while authorities continued to fight a serious outbreak in the northeast that left more than 28 million people in prison.
The total number of cases remains well below what China saw at the height of the outbreak in early 2020, but concerns about a new national wave are growing with a major national holiday a month from now and estimates of 296 million passenger trips during the new year holidays.
In his statement, marking two million deaths, Guterres urged world leaders to “increase the confidence and knowledge of vaccines with effective fact-based communication”.
But this is not happening everywhere. In Brazil, where an average of more than 1,000 people die each day, President Jair Bolsonaro has repeatedly questioned the safety of vaccines and said he will refuse to be vaccinated.
“Nobody will be forced to get vaccinated”, Bolsonaro swore this week during an Internet transmission. “If you don’t want to, don’t have it. It is your right. After all … we have no proof [they are safe]. “
According to the University of Oxford, 35 million doses of various Covid-19 vaccines have been administered worldwide, many of them in rich countries like the UK.
On Friday, British Prime Minister Boris Johnson said that “the biggest and fastest vaccination campaign in our history” was underway, adding: “Chances are that you personally know someone who has already received a vaccine ”.
At the U.S, the new president, Joe Biden, revealed ambitious plans to vaccinate 100 million Americans in his first 100 days in office.
“This will be one of the most challenging operational efforts ever undertaken by our country – but you have my word, we will manage the hell out of this operation,” he said.
India launched on Saturday one of the largest vaccination programs in the world, with the goal of inoculating a quarter of a billion people in the coming months, including health professionals, people over 50 and those at high risk.
On the first day of the program, 300,000 people were to be vaccinated in 3,000 centers.
But in many developing countries, including Brazil, vaccination has not yet started, with some experts convinced that government inaction means that many countries will do even worse this year than in the past.
“Of course, the pandemic took the whole world by surprise and killed many people – that’s why you call it a pandemic,” said Mariana Varella, a Brazilian public health writer.
“But we didn’t need to be in the situation we are in, with the death toll, the overburdened health system.”