Covid claims 3 million lives when the burden shifts to the poorest nations

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The relentless pace of death from the global Covid-19 pandemic continues unabated despite global vaccination efforts, and it is now increasingly taking over the world’s poorest places.

More than 3 million lives have been lost as a result of the new coronavirus that emerged in 2019, with the last 1 million deaths recorded arriving even faster than the first two. It took about 8.5 months after the initial death in China to mark the first million and only 3.5 more months to reach the second million.

According to data from Johns Hopkins University, the death toll topped 3 million on Saturday, just about three months after topping 2 million on Jan. 15. expects the end of the pandemic to be in sight with the widespread deployment of vaccines.

The actual number of deaths by Covid-19 is likely to be far away over 3 million, due to incomplete and incomplete information worldwide.

The macabre milestone highlights a growing disparity in the fight against the pandemic, which is parallel to the gap in access to vaccines. Although mortality rates have been greatly reduced in the United States and some parts of Europe thanks to the introduction of vaccines that promise to return to normal life, the developing world (Brazil in particular) is assuming an increase in the number of deaths.

Only five sites account for about half of the last million deaths. Only the United States claimed 18% of the world total, still with the highest country share.

But the terrain is changing. The mortality burden is growing in the less affluent parts of the world, including those who have difficulty accessing vaccines. Among the last million fatalities, Brazil’s share grew by 9.5 percentage points compared to the previous million deaths, followed by Mexico and Peru.

Other countries have reduced their share of the last million fatalities, and India, Iran and Argentina have fallen the most. Developed countries from Italy and the United States to France and Belgium also had a lower share in the new death toll compared to the previous million.

The findings underscore the need to bring vaccines to the world, public health officials said. Approximately 40% of the Covid-19 vaccines administered have been targeted at people from 27 rich nations representing only 11% of the world’s population, according to the Bloomberg vaccine tracker.

Read more: The vaccine rate is 2,400% faster in the richest countries in the world

“There are many countries where people have not received a single vaccine,” said Bali Pulendran, a professor of microbiology and immunology at Stanford University in California. “It is not enough to vaccinate everyone in one country. If you don’t vaccinate the whole population, you won’t control the pandemic. “

Disparities in vaccination pose a threat to the world. The more the coronavirus is controlled, the more chances it has of developing dangerous mutations. It has already been shown that some existing vaccines exist less effective against new variants such as that of South Africa. The possibility of a mutation entering a highly vaccinated country and triggering another wave of Covid cannot be ruled out.

“Vaccines give us light at the end of the tunnel, but we are not there yet,” World Health Organization Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said at a briefing earlier this month. “We must all continue to protect ourselves and those around us by making the right decisions.