Covid death toll of 4m ‘likely underestimates’ real global figure, says WHO

The global death toll from Covid-19 has passed 4m confirmed cases, as the virus continues to ravage countries with low vaccination coverage.

The number of people killed by the virus has increased at a quickening pace over the course of the pandemic, according to data compiled by Johns Hopkins University. One million Covid deaths were recorded in the past two and a half months alone, yet it took nine months to reach the 1m death mark.

The rollout of more than 3.3bn vaccine doses globally has stemmed the daily death toll in recent months, with about 7,900 deaths recorded every day, compared with more than 18,000 a day in January.

But Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, the World Health Organization’s director-general, stressed that the world was at “perilous point in this pandemic”, adding that the 4m milestone “likely underestimates the overall toll”.

“Compounded by fast-moving variants and shocking inequity in vaccination, far too many countries in every region of the world are seeing sharp spikes in cases and hospitalisations,” Tedros said at a news conference on Wednesday.

The virus has claimed 600,000 lives in the US alone, but death rates have fallen sharply there thanks to one of the world’s fastest vaccination drives. Meanwhile, the death toll in Latin America is rising, as the region contends with the fast-spreading Delta and Lambda coronavirus variants and much lower vaccine coverage. In the week to July 6, seven of the 10 countries with the highest death rates from Covid were in South America.

Jeremy Farrar, director of the health charity Wellcome Trust, said that while vaccines had reduced severe disease and deaths in countries with widespread coverage, there was “a tragically different picture” in the rest of the world. “We have the tools we need to end this pandemic — vaccines, treatments and tests — but this will only work when they’re available to everyone, everywhere,” he said.

While the pandemic’s death toll is already fourfold higher than that of the 1957 Asian flu outbreak and Hong Kong flu outbreak of 1968, it still lags far behind the more than 50m deaths caused by the 1918 flu pandemic.

Mike Ryan, the WHO’s executive director for health emergencies, has previously decried the “paternalism” and “colonial mindset” underpinning richer countries’ arguments against sharing vaccines with poorer nations claiming they are unable to store and administer them successfully due to a lack of infrastructure.

“For years and years and years, many countries in the South [have been] much better than countries in the North at delivering mass population-based vaccination,” Ryan said. “They’ve proven it again and again and again, with yellow fever, meningitis, with cholera, with Ebola, with polio, with measles.”

Aurélia Nguyen of Gavi, the UN-backed vaccine alliance, told the Financial Times that the global disparities in vaccine supply were “unacceptable”.

“Covax has now been able to deliver 100m doses to 135 countries but we should have delivered three times that amount by now,” she said. “We need countries that have doses to share them with Covax now and we need manufacturers to prioritise Covax over supply to countries who already have excess doses so we can protect those that are most at risk.”