Global COVID-19 deaths rise above ‘mind-numbing’ million

Wednesday, 30 September 2020 00:13 - - {{hitsCtrl.values.hits}}

Reuters: The global coronavirus death toll surpassed a million on Tuesday, according to a Reuters tally, a bleak statistic in a pandemic that has devastated the global economy, overloaded health systems and turned daily life upside down.

The number of COVID-19 deaths this year is now double the number of people who die annually from malaria - and the death rate has increased in recent weeks as infections surge in several countries.

“Our world has reached an agonising milestone,” UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said in a statement.

“It’s a mind-numbing figure. Yet 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 rate of fatalities since the first death was recorded in China in early January.

More than 5,400 people are dying around the world every 24 hours, according to Reuters calculations based on September averages, overwhelming funeral businesses and cemeteries.

That equates to about 226 people an hour, or one person every 16 seconds. In the time it takes to watch a 90-minute soccer match, 340 people die on average.

“So many people have lost so many people and haven’t had the chance to say goodbye,” World Health Organization (WHO) spokeswoman Margaret Harris told a UN briefing in Geneva.

“...Many, many of the people who died, died alone in medical circumstances where it’s a terribly difficult and lonely death.”

Jeremy Farrar, director of the Wellcome Trust global health charity, said the “unrecorded” death toll was much higher than a million.

“We must not forget that this pandemic is still accelerating and shows no signs of slowing down,” he said in a statement, calling for $35 billion in urgently needed contributions for the WHO’s ACT-Accelerator program to back vaccines, treatments and diagnostics.

“We must do everything in our power to bring this pandemic, and all its harmful consequences, to an end as quickly as possible.”

Experts remain concerned that the official figures for deaths significantly under-represent the real tally because of inadequate testing and the possibility of concealment by some countries.