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GENEVA: The World Health Organization (WHO) described the 1 million deaths from COVID-19 as a “dying milestone”, even as infections continue to rise.
The number of deaths from the new coronavirus this year now doubles the number of people dying annually from malaria, and the death rate has risen in recent weeks as infections rise in several countries.
“Our world has reached an agonizing milestone,” UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres said in a statement on Tuesday (September 29).
“He is a mind-boggling figure. However, we must never lose sight of each and every individual life. They were fathers and mothers, wives and husbands, brothers and sisters, friends and colleagues.”
It took just three months for COVID-19 deaths to double from half a million, an accelerating death rate since China’s first death was recorded in early January.
More than 5,400 people die around the world every 24 hours, according to Reuters calculations based on September averages, overwhelming funeral homes and cemeteries.
That works out to about 226 people per hour, or one person every 16 seconds. In the time it takes to watch a 90-minute soccer game, an average of 340 people die.
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“So many people have lost so many people and have not had the opportunity to say goodbye. Many people who died died alone … It is a terribly difficult and lonely death,” said World Health Organization (WHO) spokeswoman Margaret Harris. to the UN briefing in Geneva.
“The only positive thing about this virus is that it can be suppressed, it is not the flu.”
INFECTIONS INCREASING
Experts remain concerned that the official figures for deaths and cases globally represent significantly below the true count due to inadequate testing and recording and the possibility of some countries concealing them.
The response to the pandemic has confronted advocates of health measures such as lockouts trying to maintain politically sensitive economic growth, with approaches that differ from country to country.
The United States, Brazil and India, which together account for nearly 45 percent of all COVID-19 deaths globally, have lifted social distancing measures in recent weeks.
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“The American people should anticipate that cases will increase in the coming days,” US Vice President Mike Pence warned Monday. Deaths in the United States totaled 205,132 and cases 7.18 million as of late Monday.
India, meanwhile, has seen the highest daily growth in infections in the world, averaging 87,500 new cases a day since early September.
READ: India reports lowest daily COVID-19 deaths since 3 Aug
Based on current trends, India will overtake the United States as the country with the most confirmed cases by the end of the year, even as Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government continues to ease lockdown measures in a bid to support a struggling economy. .
Despite the increase in cases, the death toll in India of 96,318 and the growth rate of deaths remains below those of the United States, Great Britain and Brazil. India on Tuesday reported its smallest increase in deaths since Aug. 3, continuing a recent easing trend that has puzzled experts.
In Europe, which accounts for almost 25 percent of deaths, the WHO warned of a worrying spread in Western Europe just weeks into the winter flu season.
The WHO also warned that the pandemic still needs major control interventions amid rising cases in Latin America, where many countries have begun to resume normal life.
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Much of Asia, the first region to hit by the pandemic, is experiencing a relative hiatus after emerging from a second wave. South Korea asked people to stay home before the Chuseok fall holiday, which starts on Wednesday, but millions of people are still expected to travel across the country.
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