The death toll from Covid-19 has surpassed 6 million people globally.
Key takeaways:
- On Monday, the death toll from Covid-19 surpassed 6 million, indicating that the pandemic, now in its third year, is far from over.
- Hong Kong is putting its entire 7.5 million population to the test three times this month as part of mainland China's "zero-Covid" strategy.
- The United States is on the verge of surpassing 1 million official deaths, making it the world's largest.
Covid-19's death toll surpassed 6 million on Monday, indicating that the pandemic is far from over now in its 3rd year.
Even as individuals are shedding masks, travel is resuming, and businesses are reopening worldwide, the benchmark is the latest tragic reminder of the pandemic's unrelenting nature.
According to a tally compiled by Johns Hopkins University, the last million deaths occurred in the last four months.
This is slightly slower than the earlier million, but it shows that the coronavirus is still a problem in many countries.
Remote Pacific islands, which have long been immune to the virus due to their isolation, are only now experiencing outbreaks and deaths caused by the highly infectious omicron variant.
As it clings to mainland China's "zero-Covid" strategy, Hong Kong is putting its entire population of 7.5 million to the test three times this month.
While death rates in Poland, Hungary, Romania, and other Eastern European countries remain high, the region has already seen over 1.5 million refugees arrive from the war-torn Ukraine, which has low vaccination coverage and high rates of cases and deaths.
The United States is on the verge of surpassing 1 million reported deaths, making it the world's largest official death toll.
Despite the staggering magnitude of the figure of 6 million deaths — more than the combined populations of Berlin as well as Brussels, or the entire state of Maryland — experts believe the figure is likely an underestimate.
Many deaths have not been attributed to Covid-19 due to poor record-keeping and testing in many parts of the world, and there are also excess deaths related to the pandemic and not from actual Covid-19 infections, such as people who died of preventable causes but were unable to receive treatment due to hospital overcrowding.
The number of Covid-19 deaths is estimated to be between 14 million and 23.5 million, as per a team's analysis of excess deaths at The Economist.
In total, 450 million cases of Covid-19 have been documented.