The global death toll from COVID-19 has already exceeded two million.
The milestone was reached on Friday amid a vaccine launch so immense but so uneven that in some countries there is real hope of overcoming the outbreak, while in other parts of the world, it seems like a distant dream.
The numbing figure was crossed just over a year after the coronavirus was first detected in the Chinese city of Wuhan. The death toll, calculated by Johns Hopkins University, is almost equal to the population of Brussels, Mecca, Minsk or Vienna.
More than 93 million cases of the virus have been confirmed worldwide since the pandemic began, according to Johns Hopkins University.
Europe is the continent where the health crisis has proved most deadly, with 650,560 deaths to date.
Latin America and the Caribbean recorded 542,410 deaths, while the United States and Canada recorded 407,090.
United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres called for global solidarity in tackling the pandemic, while he marked the “moving” milestone.
“Unfortunately, the deadly impact of the pandemic has been compounded by the absence of a coordinated global effort,” he said in a video.
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 a vaccine developed with 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 people who suffered severely from the virus, received only 500,000 doses of a vaccine and barely placed half of them in the arms of health professionals.
In the United States, despite initial delays, hundreds of thousands of people roll up their sleeves every day. But the virus killed about 390,000, the highest number of deaths in any country.
The COVID-19 Vaccines Global Access Facility – COVAX, a project supported by the UN to provide injections to developing parts of the world – found itself without vaccines, money and logistical aid.
Our world has reached a heartbreaking milestone: #COVID-19 it has already cost two million lives.
Unfortunately, the impact of the pandemic was exacerbated by the lack of global coordination.
In memory of these two million souls, the world must act with far greater solidarity. pic.twitter.com/wFGZpiLmIj
– António Guterres (@antonioguterres) January 15, 2021
As a result, the chief scientist at the World Health Organization warned that it is highly unlikely that collective immunity – which would require at least 70% of the world to be vaccinated – will be achieved this year.
Health experts also fear that if vaccines are not distributed widely and quickly enough, this could give the virus time to mutate.
Dr. Julian Tang, of the University of Leicester, said that number is not so surprising, given the circumstances.
“This is a new virus to which no one really has immunity, and we are going through winter, where these respiratory viruses tend to peak,” he told Al Jazeera.
“Coronavirus vaccines arrived late, so we put it all together, winter, the delay [in] vaccination, internal capacity that comes with winter, this type of peak and mortality … is probably not so surprising ”, he added.
Meanwhile, in Wuhan, a global team of researchers led by WHO arrived on Thursday on a politically sensitive mission to investigate the origins of the virus, which is believed to have spread to humans from 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 for our customers, who have to wear masks, everything else is the same. “
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.