Coronavirus deaths reach 3 million worldwide

Three million lives: This is roughly equivalent to the loss of the population of Berlin, Chicago or Taipei. The scale is so staggering that sometimes it just starts to feel real in places like cemeteries.

According to the New York Times database, the Covid-19 death toll exceeded three million on Saturday. More than 100,000 people died in France from Covid-19. The death toll is rising in Michigan. Morgues in some Indian cities are overflowing with corpses.

And as the United States and other rich countries tried to vaccinate their populations, new parts emerged in Asia, Eastern Europe, and Latin America.

The global death toll is also accelerating. After the coronavirus broke out in the Chinese city of Wuhan, the pandemic claimed a million lives in nine months. It took another four months to kill his second million, and just three months to kill a million more.

“We have no more space,” Mohammed Shamin, a gravedigger at New Delhi’s largest Muslim cemetery, said on Saturday. “If we do not get more space, you will soon see corpses rotting in the streets.”

The deaths are the most tragic aspect of the pandemic, but they are not the only cost.

Many millions of others are sick with the virus, some with effects that can last for years or even a lifetime. The livelihood was ruined. Global work and travel have been disrupted in profound and potentially long-lasting ways.

The official toll almost certainly does not take into account all the pandemic-related deaths in the world. Some of these deaths can be mistakenly attributed to other causes, such as flu or pneumonia, while others have died as a result of the tremendous disruption of life.

The pandemic also exacerbated inequalities that were difficult to tolerate even at regular times.

67, Nanthana Chobcheun, who works at a wet market in Bangsaen in the eastern Thai city, said her income has dropped by half since the coronavirus broke out. But she can not afford to stop working, she added, even if the case in Thailand rises.

“Young people, rich people enjoy their nightlife, even when there is a contagious disease, and come into the world without care,” she said. Nanthana, who has diabetes and high blood pressure, said on Saturday at an open-air market.

“For us little people, and especially old people like me, it’s different,” she sat on a stool amidst heaps of dry fish.

Some parts of the world may be turning the corner. The United States and Britain have dropped death rates over the past few weeks as they have put in place aggressive vaccination programs. According to a New York Times tracker, 56 percent of the population was fully vaccinated as of Friday.

At the same time, there are still persistent new outbreaks in rich countries. This shocked millions of people – from Madrid to Los Angeles – who had previously expected regular life to resume with the vaccination of vaccines.

In France, which is experiencing a third national exclusion, a deep feeling of fatigue and frustration has taken hold over a seemingly endless cycle of coronavirus restrictions. The third exclusion forced limited outdoor activities, which forced the closure of shops, banning travel between regions and closing schools for a month.

One of the few highlights is the vaccination campaign, which has finally gained momentum after a sluggish start over the past few months. More than 12 million people have been given at least a first chance and the government expects another eight million to be vaccinated by May May when a gradual reopening begins.

Poland is struggling to find its way out of its third wave of infections, even though the wave appears to have peaked. A recent increase in infections and deaths in Covid-19 is putting tremendous pressure on the underfunded and understaffed healthcare system.

With a record number of patients on ventilators, the government announced on Wednesday that it would extend the current restrictions by one week, which would break down hotel owners’ hopes of reopening in the traditional May holiday and lead to more business protests. owners will lead.

Japan, which lifted a state of emergency less than a month ago and plans to host the Olympics this summer, said on Friday it would tighten restrictions in Tokyo and other cities to prevent a surge of infections in a fourth wave snowball.

And in the United States, dangerous varieties are causing new outbreaks, though new cases, hospitalizations and deaths have been declining from their peaks in January. Michigan, the country worst hit, reports an average of about 50 deaths a day, twice as many as two weeks ago, along with 7,800 new cases.

The United States and parts of Western Europe bore the brunt of the deaths for the first year of the pandemic. The most important places for deaths are now in regions such as Eastern Europe, South Asia and Latin America.

In Brazil, the largest country in Latin America, the virus claimed more than 368,000 lives and killed people at a record rate of about 2,900 a day. Vaccinations are slow, variants proliferate and hospitals are overloaded.

In Mexico, where Covid-19 killed more than 211,000 people, only one in 10 people in the country received a vaccine.

“It’s so difficult for many of us,” said Ivan Mena Álvarez, a piñata manufacturer in Mexico City who lost 11 members of his extended family to the virus. “It just never occurred to you that there would be so many deaths in such a short time.”

While richer countries have mainly vaccines, poorer countries are desperately scrambling for doses.

Vaccine safety concerns AstraZeneca and Johnson & Johnson, based on a small number of people who have developed blood clotting problems, have also exacerbated vaccine reluctance around the world – a trend that threatens to prolong the pandemic and prevent emerging vaccinations undermine.

Most countries are not even close to achieving herd immunity, the point where enough people are immune to the coronavirus that it can no longer spread through a population.

In India, where the death toll exceeded 175,000, more than 114 million people received a first dose of Covid vaccine as of Friday. But that is only 7.4 percent of the population.

The pandemic has undermined decades of economic progress in India. The country of 1.3 billion people currently records an average of about 1,000 deaths a day as a major eruption in the western state of Maharashtra, where Mumbai lives.

India alone reported 1,341 deaths on Saturday, along with nearly a quarter of a million new cases.

Swapnil Gaikwad, 28, whose uncle died in the Osmanabad district of Maharashtra on Friday, said it took seven hours to perform the traditional funeral rites because the local crematorium was so busy.

“There was absolutely no place, and more ambulances showed up,” he said.

Mr. Gaikwad got so angry at one point that he complained to the staff.

A worker there starts crying. Mr. Gaikwad said some workers told him they were so busy at the crematorium that they did not see their own families for days.

Oscar Lopez and Monica Pronczuk reported.