With the Covid-19’s death toll eclipsing 6 million Monday, it is more than obvious that the COVID pandemic, which is now in its third year, is far from finished as people around the globe are shedding masks, resuming traveling, and reopening businesses.
According to the Johns Hopkins University-compiled tally, the latest tragic reminder of the unrelenting nature of the pandemic, the last million deaths were recorded over the last four months.
Due to the poor recordkeeping and testing in many parts of the world, the number is likely a vast undercount despite the enormity of the figure of 6 million deaths, the experts argue, pointing out that many deaths have not been attributed to Covid-19.
On top of that, this number increases with the excess deaths of people who died from preventable causes but could not receive treatment because hospitals were full due to the actual Covid-19 infections.
The Economist’s analysis of excess deaths estimates the number of Covid deaths at between 14 million and 23.5 million.
It’s also underlining that many countries are still struggling with the coronavirus while some areas, such as the Remote Pacific islands, are just now grappling with their first outbreaks and deaths by the highly contagious omicron variant after their isolation has kept them protected from the virus for quite long time.
Clinging to mainland China’s “zero-Covid” strategy, Hong Kong is testing its entire population of 7.5 million three times this month as it is seeing deaths soar.
With nearly 1 million reported deaths on its own, the United States is nearing the largest official death toll in the world, but death rates also remain high in Eastern European countries such as Poland, Hungary, Romania.
To make the situation worse, the region is now facing over 1.5 million refugees from war-torn Ukraine, notorious for its poor vaccination coverage and high rates of cases and deaths.
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