Toll is equal to the number of people killed in battle in all of the world’s wars since 1982; South Korea reports record new cases; Japan set to declare state of emergency for Tokyo
- Covid surge pushes Indonesia’s health system to the brink
- Global experts urge Boris Johnson to delay ‘dangerous’ Covid reopening
- WHO warns of ‘epidemiological stupidity’ of early Covid reopening
- See all our coronavirus coverage
With the advent of the vaccine, deaths per day have plummeted to around 7,900, after topping out at over 18,000 a day in January, the Associated Press reports.
But in recent weeks, the mutant delta version of the virus first identified in India has set off alarms around the world, spreading rapidly even in vaccination success stories like the U.S., Britain and Israel.
Britain, in fact, recorded a one-day total this week of more than 30,000 new infections for the first time since January, even as the government prepares to lift all remaining lockdown restrictions in England later this month.
The global coronavirus death toll passed a staggering four million late on Wednesday as the crisis increasingly becomes a race between the vaccine and the highly contagious delta variant.
The tally of lives lost over the past year and a half, as compiled from official sources by Johns Hopkins University, is about equal to the number of people killed in battle in all of the world’s wars since 1982, according to estimates from the Peace Research Institute Oslo.
Even then, it is widely believed to be an undercount because of overlooked cases, differing definitions of what constitutes a coronavirus death, and deliberate under-reporting.
