Worldwide death toll from coronavirus eclipses 1 million

worldwide death toll from coronavirus eclipsed 1 million on Tuesday, nine months into a crisis that has devastated global ecomy, tested world leers' resolve, pitted science against politics and forced multitudes to change way y live, learn and work.

“It's t just a number. It's human beings. It's people we love,” said Dr Howard Markel, a professor of medical history at University of Michigan who has vised government officials on containing pandemics and lost his 84-year-old mor to COVID-19 in February.

“It's our brors, our sisters. It's people we kw,” he ded.

“And if you don't have that human factor right in your face, it's very easy to make it abstract.” bleak milestone, recorded by Johns Hopkins University, is greater than population of Jerusalem or Austin, Texas.

It is 2 1/2 times sea of humanity that was at Woodstock in 1969. It is more than four times number killed in 2004 earthquake and tsunami in Indian Ocean.

Even n, figure is almost certainly a vast undercount because of inequate or inconsistent testing and reporting and suspected concealment by some countries.

And number continues to mount. Nearly 5,000 deaths are reported each day on aver.

Parts of Europe are getting hit by a second wave, and experts fear same fate may await US, which accounts for about 205,000 deaths, or 1 out of 5 worldwide. That is far more than any or country, despite America's wealth and medical resources.

“I can understand why ... numbers are losing ir power to shock, but I still think it's really important that we understand how big se numbers really are,” said Mark Honigsbaum, author of “ Pandemic Century: One Hundred Years of Panic, Hysteria and Hubris.” virus has killed more than 95,000 in India.

When virus overwhelmed cemeteries in Italian province of Bergamo last spring, Rev. Mario Carminati opened his church to de, lining up 80 coffins in centre aisle. After an army convoy carted m to a crematory, ar 80 arrived. n 80 more.

Eventually, crisis receded and world's attention moved on. But pandemic's grasp endures. In August, Carminati buried his 34-year-old nephew.

“This thing should make us all reflect. problem is that we think we're all immortal,” priest said.

virus first appeared in late 2019 in patients hospitalized in Chinese city of Wuhan, where first death was reported on Jan. 11. By time authorities locked down city nearly two weeks later, millions of travellers h come and gone. China's government has come in for criticism that it did t do eugh to alert or countries to threat.

Government leers in countries like Germany, South Korea and New Zealand worked effectively to contain it.

Ors, like U.S. President Donald Trump and Brazil's Jair Bolsonaro, dismissed severity of threat and guidance of scientists, even as hospitals filled with gravely ill patients.

Brazil has recorded second most deaths after US, with about 142,000. India is third and Mexico fourth, with more than 76,000.

virus has forced tre-offs between safety and ecomic well-being. choices me have left millions of people vulnerable, especially poor, mirities and elderly.

With so many of deaths beyond view in hospital wards and clustered on society's margins, milestone recalls grim prouncement often attributed to Soviet dictator Josef Stalin: One death is a trdy, millions of deaths are a statistic.

pandemic's toll of 1 million de in such a limited time rivals some of gravest threats to public health, past and present.

It exceeds annual deaths from AIDS, which last year killed about 690,000 people worldwide. virus's toll is approaching 1.5 million global deaths each year from tuberculosis, which regularly kills more people than any or infectious disease.

But “COVID's grip on humanity is incomparably greater than grip of or causes of death,” said Lawrence Gostin, a professor of global health law at Georgetown University. He ted unemployment, poverty and despair caused by pandemic and deaths from myri or illnesses that have gone untreated.

For all its lethality, virus has claimed far fewer lives than so-called Spanish flu, which killed an estimated 40 million to 50 million worldwide in two years, just over a century ago.

That pandemic came before scientists h microscopes powerful eugh to identify enemy or antibiotics that could treat bacterial pneumonia that killed most of victims.

It also ran a far different course. In U.S., for example, Spanish flu killed about 675,000. But most of those deaths did t come until a second wave hit over winter of 1918-19.

Up to w, disease has left only a faint footprint on Africa, well shy of early modelling that predicted thousands of more deaths.

But cases have recently surged in countries like Britain, Spain, Russia and Israel. In United States, return of students to college campuses has sparked new outbreaks. With approval and distribution of a vaccine still probably months away and winter approaching in rrn Hemisphere, toll will continue to climb.

“We're only at beginning of this. We're going to see many more weeks ahe of this pandemic than we've h behind us,” Gostin said.