The global number of COVID-19 deaths reaches 2 million amid vaccine launches

The global number of COVID-19 deaths reached 2 million on Friday, with high-speed vaccines being launched worldwide in a total campaign to overcome the threat.

The milestone 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 population of the Cleveland metropolitan area or the entire state of Nebraska.

Although the count is based on figures provided by government agencies worldwide, the actual number is believed to be significantly higher, in part because of inadequate testing and the many fatalities that have been imprecisely attributed to other causes, especially in the outbreak.

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

“Behind that 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 with the silence of a loved one,” said the UN secretary general. , Antonio Guterres. He said the number of victims “has been exacerbated by the absence of a coordinated global effort”

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

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.