MEXICO CITY (AP) – The global number of COVID-19 deaths reached 2 million on Friday, crossing the threshold amid a vaccine implantation so immense but so uneven that in some countries there is real hope of winning the outbreak, while in others, less developed parts of the world, seems like a distant dream.
The narcotic figure 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 almost equal to the population of Brussels, Mecca, Minsk or Vienna. It is roughly equivalent to the metropolitan area of Cleveland or the entire state of Nebraska.
“There has been a terrible amount of death,” said Dr. Ashish Jha, a pandemic expert and dean of the Brown University School of Public Health. At the same time, he said, “our scientific community has also done an extraordinary job.”
In wealthy countries, including the United States, Britain, Israel, Canada and Germany, millions of citizens have already received some measure of protection with at least one dose of the vaccine developed at revolutionary speed and quickly authorized for use.
But elsewhere, immunization initiatives are barely off the ground. Many experts are predicting yet another year of losses and difficulties in places like Iran, India, Mexico and Brazil, which together account for about a quarter of deaths worldwide.
“As a country, society and citizens, we don’t understand,” lamented Israel Gomez, a Mexico City paramedic who spent months transporting COVID-19 patients by ambulance, desperately looking for vacant hospital beds. “We don’t understand that this is not a game, that it really exists.”
Mexico, a country of 130 million inhabitants, received only 500,000 doses of vaccine and barely placed half of them in the arms of health professionals.
This is in sharp contrast to the situation of its wealthiest neighbor in the north. Despite initial delays, hundreds of thousands of people are rolling up their sleeves every day in the United States, where the virus killed about 390,000, by far the largest number of victims in any country.
In all, more than 35 million doses of various COVID-19 vaccines have been administered worldwide, according to the University of Oxford.
Although vaccination campaigns in rich countries have been hampered by long lines, inadequate budgets and a patchwork of state and local approaches, the obstacles are much greater in poorer nations, which may have weak health systems, transportation networks in ruins, ingrained corruption and a lack of reliable electricity to keep vaccines cool enough.
In addition, most of the world’s doses of the COVID-19 vaccine have already been purchased by wealthy countries. COVAX, a project supported by the UN to provide injections to developing parts of the world, has found itself short of vaccine, money and logistical aid.
As a result, the chief scientist at the World Health Organization warned that it is highly unlikely that collective immunity – which would require that at least 70% of the globe be vaccinated – will be achieved this year. As the disaster demonstrated, it is not enough to extinguish the virus in some places.
“Even if it happens in some pockets, in some countries, it will not protect people around the world,” said Dr. Soumya Swaminathan this week.
Health experts also fear that if vaccines are not distributed widely and quickly enough, it could give the virus time to mutate and defeat the vaccine – “the scene of my nightmare,” as Jha said.
UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said the 2 million milestone “was made worse by the absence of a coordinated global effort”. He added: “Science has succeeded, but solidarity has failed.”
Meanwhile, in Wuhan, where the scourge was discovered in late 2019, a global team of researchers led by WHO arrived Thursday on a politically sensitive mission to investigate the origins of the virus, which is believed to have spread to humans from of wild animals.
The Chinese city of 11 million is in turmoil again, with little sign that it was once the epicenter of the catastrophe, blocked for 76 days, with more than 3,800 dead.
“We are not scared or worried as in the past,” said Qin Qiong, owner of a noodle shop. “Now we live a normal life. I take the subway every day to go to work at the store. … Except our customers, who have to wear masks, everything else is the same. “
It took eight months to reach 1 million deaths, but less than four months after that to reach the next million.
Although the death toll is based on figures provided by government agencies worldwide, the actual number of lives lost is believed to be significantly higher, in part because of inadequate testing and the many fatalities incorrectly attributed to other causes, especially at the beginning of the outbreak.
“What was never on the horizon is that many of the deaths would happen in the richest countries in the world,” said Bharat Pankhania, an infectious disease specialist at the University of Exeter in Britain. “That the richest countries in the world manage so poorly is just shocking.”
In both rich and poor countries, the crisis devastated economies, drove multitudes out of work and plunged many into poverty.
In Europe, where more than a quarter of the world’s deaths have occurred, strict blockages and curfews have been reimposed to prevent the virus from resurging, and a new variant believed to be more contagious is circulating in Britain and other countries, just like the USA
Even in some of the wealthiest countries, vaccination campaigns have been slower than expected. France, with Europe’s second largest economy and more than 69,000 known virus deaths, will need years, not months, to vaccinate its 53 million adults, unless it dramatically accelerates its deployment, hampered by scarcity, bureaucracy and considerable suspicion vaccines.
Still, in places like Poissy, a working-class city west of Paris, the first pictures of the Pfizer formula were met with relief and a feeling that there is light at the end of the pandemic tunnel.
“We have been living indoors for almost a year. It’s not a life, ”said Maurice Lachkar, a 78-year-old retired acupuncturist who was placed on the priority list for vaccinations because of his diabetes and his age. “If I get the virus, I’m done.”
Maurice and his wife, Nicole, who was also vaccinated, said they could even allow hugs with their two children and four grandchildren, who they saw from a socially safe distance only once or twice since the pandemic.
“It will be liberating,” he said.
Across the developing world, the images are surprisingly similar: rows and rows of graves being dug, hospitals pushed to the limit and medical professionals dying for lack of protective equipment.
In Peru, which has the highest COVID-19 mortality rate in Latin America, hundreds of health workers went on strike this week to demand better wages and working conditions in a country where 230 doctors died of the disease. In Brazil, authorities in the largest city in the Amazon rainforest planned to transfer hundreds of patients because of an ever-decreasing supply of oxygen tanks, which resulted in the death of some people at home.
In Honduras, anesthesiologist Dr. Cesar Umaña is treating 25 patients in their homes by phone because hospitals lack capacity and equipment.
“This is complete chaos,” he said.
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Cheng reported from Toronto, Leicester from Poissy, France and Goodman from Miami. Associated Press editors Victoria Milko in Jakarta, Indonesia, and David Biller in Rio de Janeiro contributed to this report, along with AP video journalist Sam McNeil in Wuhan, China.