The Global death toll from COVID-19 topped 5 million on Monday, less than two years into a crisis that has not only devastated poor countries but also humbled wealthy ones with first-rate health care systems.
Together, the United States, the European Union, Britain and Brazil — all upper-middle- or high-income countries — account for one-eighth of the world’s population but nearly half of all reported deaths. The U.S. alone has recorded over 740,000 lives lost, more than any other nation.
“This is a defining moment in our lifetime,” said Dr. Albert Ko, an infectious disease specialist at the Yale School of Public Health. “What do we have to do to protect ourselves so we don’t get to another 5 million?”
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The death toll, as tallied by Johns Hopkins University, is about equal to the populations of Los Angeles and San Francisco combined. It rivals the number of people killed in battles among nations since 1950, according to estimatesFrom the Peace Research Institute Oslo. COVID-19, which is now the third leading cause for death worldwide, is stroke and heart disease.
This staggering number is almost certain to be an undercount due to limited testing and people dying at their homes without medical attention, especially in the poorer parts of the globe like India.
Over the 22 months since the outbreak began hot spots have moved, turning different locations on the world map red. Now, Russia is being ravaged by the virus, Ukraine and other Eastern Europe countriesEspecially in places where misinformation, rumors and distrust in government have hindered vaccination efforts. Only 17% of Ukraine’s adult population are fully vaccinated, while only 7% in Armenia.
“What’s uniquely different about this pandemic is it hit hardest the high-resource countries,” said Dr. Wafaa El-Sadr, director of ICAP, a global health center at Columbia University. “That’s the irony of COVID-19.”
El-Sadr pointed out that wealthier countries have higher life expectancies and more elderly people. They also have more cancer survivors and residents of nursing homes. All of these are particularly vulnerable to COVID-19. The coronavirus is less common in the poorer countries, where there are more children, teens, and young adults.
Despite the terrifying delta surge that reached its peak in May, India now has a lower reported daily death rate, even though it is uncertain about its figures.
The apparent disconnect between wealth and health is something that disease experts will continue to study for years. The pattern seen when nations are compared is not the same when viewed from a closer distance. Poorer areas are the hardest hit in each rich country when deaths and infections can be mapped.
COVID-19 in the U.S. has taken a huge toll on Black and Hispanic communities, who are more likely than Whites to live in poverty and have less health care access.
Ko stated, “When we get out the microscopes, we can see that within countries most vulnerable have suffered the most,”
Global vaccination drives have also been influenced by wealth, with wealthy countries being accused of locking up supplies. Already, booster shots are being distributed by the U.S.A. and other countries at a moment when millions are ill. across Africa haven’t received a single doseEven though rich countries ship hundreds of millions of shots to other parts of the globe,
Africa remains the world’s Region least vaccinatedOnly 5% of the 1.3 billion people are fully covered.
Cissy Kagaba of Kampala, Uganda lost her 62-years-old mother on Christmas Day. Her 76 year-old father died days later.
Kagaba, an anticorruption activist in East Africa’s country where multiple lockdowns have been made against the virus and a curfew is still in place, said that Christmas will never be the exact same for him.
The pandemic has brought together the world in grief and driven survivors to their breaking point.
“Who is there now?” It is my responsibility. COVID has changed my life,” said 32-year-old Reena Kesarwani, a mother of two boys, who was left to manage her late husband’s modest hardware store in a village in India.
Anand Babu Kesarwani, her husband, died at the age of 38 in India’s coronavirus epidemic earlier this year. It overtook one of the most underfunded public health systems in the country and killed tens to thousands of people as hospitals ran out oxygen and medicine.
In Bergamo, Italy, once the site of the West’s first deadly wave, 51-year-old Fabrizio Fidanza was deprived of a final farewell as his 86-year-old father lay dying in the hospital. More than a year later, he is still struggling to accept the loss.
“For the last month, I never saw him,’’ Fidanza said during a visit to his father’s grave. It was the worst moment. But, I’m here every week and it helps me.”
Today, 92% of Bergamo’s eligible population have had at least one shot, the highest vaccination rate in Italy. The chief of medicine at Pope John XXIII Hospital, Dr. Stefano Fagiuoli, said he believes that’s a clear result of the city’s collective trauma, when the wail of ambulances was constant.
In Lake City, Florida, LaTasha Graham, 38, still gets mail almost daily for her 17-year-old daughter, Jo’Keria, who died of COVID-19 in August, days before starting her senior year of high school. The teen wanted to become a trauma surgeon and was buried in her cap-and-gown.
“I know she would have made it. “I know that she would’ve been where she wanted,” her mother said.
In Rio de Janeiro, Erika Machado scanned the list of names engraved on a long, undulating sculpture of oxidized steel that stands in Penitencia cemetery as an homage to some of Brazil’s COVID-19 victims. She found her father, Wagner Machado.
“My dad was the love of my life, my best friend,” said Machado, 40, a saleswoman who traveled from Sao Paulo to see her father’s name. “He was everything to us.”
Source: Fox News
