Pandemic Passes Another Unwanted Milestone

The official global death toll from COVID-19 eclipsed 6 million on Monday—underscoring that the pandemic, now entering its third year, is far from over. The milestone was recorded by Johns Hopkins University, per the AP.

• Death rates worldwide are still highest among people unvaccinated against the virus, said Tikki Pang, a visiting professor at the National University of Singapore’s medical school. "This is a disease of the unvaccinated," said Pang, the former director of research policy and cooperation with the World Health Organization.

• It took the world seven months to record its first million deaths from the virus after the pandemic began in early 2020. Four months later another million people had died, and 1 million have died every three months since, until the death toll hit 5 million at the end of October. Now it has reached 6 million—more than the populations of Berlin and Brussels combined, or the entire state of Maryland.
• As death rates remain high in Poland, Hungary, Romania, and other Eastern European countries, the region has seen more than 1.5 million refugees arrive from war-torn Ukraine, a country with poor vaccination coverage and high rates of cases and deaths. And despite its wealth and vaccine availability, the United States is nearing 1 million reported deaths on its own.
• Hong Kong, which is seeing deaths soar, is testing its entire population of 7.5 million three times this month as it clings to mainland China’s “zero-COVID” strategy.

(More COVID-19 stories.)