MEXICO CITY (AP) – The global death toll from COVID-19 exceeded 2 million on Friday, crossing the threshold amid a huge but so uneven vaccine deployment that in some countries there is a real hope of winning the outbreak, while in others, less developed parts of the world, seems like a distant dream.
The dormant figure 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 Cleveland metropolitan area or the entire state of Nebraska.
“There have been a terrible number of deaths,” said Dr. Ashish Jha, a pandemic expert and dean of Brown University School of Public Health. At the same time, he said, “our scientific community has also done an extraordinary job.”
In rich countries such as the United States, Britain, Israel, Canada and Germany, millions of citizens have already received some protection with at least one dose of vaccine developed with a revolutionary revolution and quickly authorized for use.
But elsewhere, vaccination actions have barely begun. Many experts predict another year of losses and hardship in places like Iran, India, Mexico and Brazil, which together account for about a quarter of the world’s deaths.
“As a country, as a society, as citizens we have not understood,” lamented Israel Gomez, a Mexico City health worker who spent months transporting COVID-19 patients by ambulance desperately searching for hospital beds. “We didn’t understand that this is not a game, that this really exists.”
Mexico, a country of 130 million people, has received only 500,000 doses of vaccine and has put in just half the arms of health workers.
This contrasts with the situation of its richest northern neighbor. Despite the first delays, hundreds of thousands of people are breaking their sleeves every day in the United States, where the virus has killed about 390,000, by far the highest number of countries.
In all, more than 35 million doses of various COVID-19 vaccines have been administered worldwide, according to Oxford University.
Although vaccination lines in rich countries have been hampered by long lines, inadequate budgets, and a mosaic of state and local approaches, barriers are much greater in poorer nations, which may have weak health, collapsed transport networks, consolidated corruption and a lack of reliable electricity to keep vaccines cold enough.
In addition, most of the world’s doses of COVID-19 vaccine have already been captured by rich countries. COVAX, a UN-backed project to supply fire to parts of the developing world, has been in short supply of vaccine, money and logistical assistance.
As a result, the World Health Organization chief scientist warned that herd immunity (which would require at least 70% of the world to be vaccinated) is very unlikely to be achieved this year. As the disaster has shown, it is not enough to remove the virus in some places.
“Even if it happens in a couple of pockets, in some countries, it will not protect people around the world,” Dr. Soumya Swaminathan said this week.
Health experts also fear that if the disputes do not spread widely enough and quickly, it could give the virus time to mutate and defeat the vaccine: “my nightmare scenario,” Jha said.
UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said the two-million target “has been exacerbated by the absence of a coordinated global effort.” He added: “Science has been successful, but solidarity has failed.”
Meanwhile, in Wuhan, where the scourge was discovered in late 2019, a global team of WHO-led researchers 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 eleven million people is boiling again, with few indications that it was the epicenter of the catastrophe, closed for 76 days, with more than 3,800 dead.
“It doesn’t scare us or worry us like in the past,” said Qin Qiong, owner of a noodle shop. “It simply came to our notice then. I take the subway every day to come to work at the store. … Except for our customers, who have to wear masks, everything else is the same. “
It took eight months to reach one million deaths, but less than four months after reaching the next million.
Although the death toll is based on figures provided by government agencies around the world, the actual number of lives lost is believed to be significantly higher, in part due to inadequate evidence and the numerous fatalities incorrectly attributed to other causes, especially early onset.
“What was never seen on the horizon is that so many of the deaths would occur in the richest countries in the world,” said Dr Bharat Pankhania, an infectious disease expert at the British University of Exeter. “That the richest countries in the world manage so badly is amazing.”
In both rich and poor countries, the crisis has devastated economies, left many unemployed and has plunged many into poverty.
In Europe, where more than a quarter of the world’s deaths have occurred, strict blockades and curfews have been re-imposed to combat the resurgence of the virus, and a new variant believed to be more contagious is circulating in Britain and other countries, as well as the US
Even in some of the richest countries, vaccination initiatives have been slower than expected. France, with the second largest economy in Europe and more than 69,000 known deaths from viruses, will need years, not months, to vaccinate its 53 million adults, unless it abruptly accelerates its deployment, hampered by scarcity, administrative formalities and considerable suspicion of vaccines.
However, in places like Poissy, a blue-collar city west of Paris, the first features of the Pfizer formula were met with relief and the feeling that there is light at the end of the pandemic tunnel.
“We have been living inside for almost a year. It’s not a life, “said Maurice Lachkar, a 78-year-old retired acupuncturist who was included in the list of priorities for vaccination because of his diabetes and his age.” If I catch the virus, I’m done. ” .
Maurice and his wife, Nicole, who were also vaccinated, said they could even afford hugs with their two children and four grandchildren, whom they have only seen once or twice from a socially safe distance. since he suffered the pandemic.
“It will be liberating,” he said.
Across the developing world, the images are strikingly similar: rows and rows of graves are dug, hospitals are confined, and medical workers die for lack of protective equipment.
In Peru, which has the highest COVID-19 mortality rate in Latin America, hundreds of health workers went on strike this week to demand better wage and working conditions in a country where 230 doctors have died from the disease. In Brazil, authorities in the largest city in the Amazon rainforest planned to relocate hundreds of patients due to the declining supply of oxygen tanks that has resulted in the deaths of some people at home.
In Honduras, anesthesiologist Dr. Cesar Umaña is treating 25 patients by telephone at home because hospitals do not have the necessary capacity and equipment.
“This is complete chaos,” he said.
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Cheng reported from Toronto, Leicester from Poissy, France and Goodman from Miami. Associated Press writers Victoria Milko in Jakarta, Indonesia, and David Biller in Rio de Janeiro contributed to this report, along with AP video journalist Sam McNeil in Wuhan, China.