Death toll nears 6 million as pandemic enters its 3rd year
Source: AP
The official global death toll from COVID-19 is on the verge of eclipsing 6 million — underscoring that the pandemic, now entering its third year, is far from over. The death toll, compiled by Johns Hopkins University, stood at 5,997,994 as of Sunday afternoon.
Remote Pacific islands, whose isolation had protected them for more than two years, are just now grappling with their first outbreaks and deaths, fueled by the highly contagious omicron variant. Hong Kong, which is seeing deaths soar, is testing its entire population of 7.5 million three times this month as it clings to mainland China’s “zero-COVID” strategy.
As death rates remain high in Poland, Hungary, Romania and other Eastern European countries, the region has seen more than 1 million refugees arrive from war-torn Ukraine, a country with poor vaccination coverage and high rates of cases and deaths.
And despite its wealth and vaccine availability,
the United States is nearing 1 million reported deaths on its own.
Death rates worldwide are still highest among people unvaccinated against the virus, said Tikki Pang, a visiting professor at the National University of Singapore’s medical school and co-Chair of the Asia Pacific Immunization Coalition.
“This is a disease of the unvaccinated.”
Read more: https://apnews.com/article/russia-ukraine-coronavirus-pandemic-science-business-health-69e8cbaebb653a0f1cb65ffe33d9afbd
Edouard Mathieu, head of data for the Our World in Data portal, said that
as many as nearly four times the reported death toll have likely died because of the pandemic.
An analysis by a team at The Economist estimates that the number of COVID-19 deaths is between 14 million and 23.5 million.
“Confirmed deaths represent a fraction of the true number of deaths due to COVID, mostly because of limited testing, and challenges in the attribution of the cause of death,” Mathieu told The Associated Press.
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