Overall death toll from COVID-19: 3 million

RIO DE JANEIRO (AP) – The global death toll from coronavirus exceeded 3 million people on Saturday, amid repeated setbacks in the global vaccination campaign and a crisis that is deepening in places like Brazil, the India and France.

The number of lives lost, compiled by Johns Hopkins University, is almost equal to the population of Kiev, Ukraine; Caracas, Venezuela; or Metropolitan Lisbon, Portugal. It is larger than Chicago (2.7 million) and is equivalent to Philadelphia and Dallas combined.

And the actual number is believed to be significantly higher due to possible government concealment and numerous cases ignored in the early stages of the outbreak that began in Wuhan, China, in late 2019.

When the world in January surpassed the bleak threshold of 2 million deaths, vaccination initiatives had just begun in Europe and the United States. Today they are underway in more than 190 countries, although advances in controlling the virus vary widely.

Although campaigns in the United States and Britain have taken a big step and people and businesses are beginning to contemplate life after the pandemic, other places, mostly poor countries, but also some rich ones, are lagging behind in putting gunfire and new blockades and other restrictions have been imposed as virus cases soar.

Worldwide, deaths are rising again, averaging around 12,000 a day, and new cases are also on the rise, eclipsing 700,000 a day.

“This is not the situation we want to be in 16 months in a pandemic, where we have tested control measures,” said Maria Van Kerkhove, one of the leaders of the World Health Organization at COVID-19.

In Brazil, where deaths run at about 3,000 a day, accounting for a quarter of the lives lost worldwide in recent weeks, the crisis has been compared to a “furious hell” by a WHO official. A more contagious variant of the virus has spread across the country.

As cases increase, hospitals run out of critical sedatives. As a result, there have been reports of some doctors diluting the remaining supplies and even tying patients to the beds while the breathing tubes are thrown down their throats.

The slow deployment of vaccines has crushed the pride of Brazilians in their own history of carrying out huge vaccination campaigns that were the envy of the developing world.

Taking signs from President Jair Bolsonaro, who has compared the virus to little more than a flu, the Ministry of Health opted for months for a single vaccine, ignoring other producers. When bottlenecks arose, it was too late to get large amounts on time.

Seeing so many patients suffer and die alone in their hospital in Rio de Janeiro prompted nurse Lidiane Melo to take desperate action.

In the early days of the pandemic, while patients cried out for comfort that it was too busy to provide, Melo filled two rubber gloves with warm water, closed them with knots, and placed them in the hand of a patient. to simulate a loving touch.

Some have dubbed the practice the “hand of God,” and it is now the fiery image of a nation springing up with an endless medical emergency in sight.

“Patients cannot receive visitors. Unfortunately, there is no way. Therefore, it is a way to provide psychological support, to be there with the patient holding hands, ”said Melo. He added: “And this year is worse, the severity of patients is 1,000 times greater.”

This situation is equally dire in India, where cases rose in February after weeks of steady decline, surprising authorities. In a wave driven by virus variants, India saw more than 180,000 new infections in a 24-hour period over the past week, bringing the total number of cases to over 13.9 million.

The problems that India had overcome last year are once again haunting health officials. Only 178 fans were free on Wednesday afternoon in New Delhi, a city of 29 million people, where 13,000 infections were recorded the day before.

The challenges facing India reverberate beyond its borders, as the country is the largest provider of traits to COVAX, the UN-sponsored program to distribute vaccines to poorer parts of the world. Last month, India said it would suspend vaccine exports until the spread of the virus in the country is reduced.

Recently, the WHO described the supply situation as precarious. According to one estimate, up to 60 countries may not receive more firing until June. To date, COVAX has administered about 40 million doses to more than 100 countries, enough to cover just 0.25% of the world’s population.

Globally, about 87% of the 700 million doses dispensed have been administered in rich countries. Although 1 in 4 people in rich nations has received a vaccine, in poor countries the figure is 1 in more than 500.

In recent days, the United States and some European countries have suspended the use of Johnson & Johnson’s COVID-19 vaccine while authorities are investigating extremely rare but dangerous blood clots. AstraZeneca vaccine has also been affected by delays and restrictions due to a clotting fright.

Another concern: poorer countries rely on vaccines made by China and Russia, which some scientists believe provide less protection than those from Pfizer, Moderna and AstraZeneca.

Last week, the director of the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention acknowledged that the country’s vaccines offer low protection and said officials are studying mixing them with other traits to improve their effectiveness.

In the United States, where more than 560,000 lives have been lost, accounting for more than 1 in 6 deaths from COVID-19 in the world, hospitalizations and deaths have dropped, businesses are reopening and life is beginning to return to something that approaches normalcy in various states. . The number of Americans applying for unemployment benefits fell last week to 576,000, a low after COVID-19.

But progress has been uneven, and in recent weeks new hotspots (especially Michigan) have been saved. Still, deaths in the United States fall to about 700 per day on average, plummeting from a mid-January high of about 3,400.

In Europe, countries feel the weight of a more contagious variant that swept Britain for the first time and that has caused the number of COVID-19-related deaths on the continent to exceed one million.

Nearly 6,000 seriously ill patients are being treated in French critical care units, figures not seen since the first wave a year ago.

Dr. Marc Leone, head of intensive care at Marseille’s North Hospital, said the exhausted front-line staff members who were made heroes at the start of the pandemic now feel lonely and cling to the hope that the closure of renovated schools and other restrictions will help curb the virus in the coming weeks.

“There is exhaustion, more bad mood. You have to be careful because there are a lot of conflicts, ”he said. “We will give everything we have to spend these 15 days as best we can.”