Less than two years after it was declared a pandemic by the World Health Organization, COVID-19’s worldwide death toll has topped 5 million.
That’s the latest from the Center for Systems Science and Engineering at Johns Hopkins University’s coronavirus resource center, which—at the time of this writing—was reporting 5,001,871 deaths globally. The U.S., unsurprisingly, leads the world in deaths on a nation-by-nation basis with 745,836.
The Associated Press points out that the U.S., the European Union, Britain, and Brazil—despite being responsible for just one-eighth of the global population—are together accounting for nearly half of all reported pandemic deaths. And as always, these numbers are likely much higher due to the absence of unrecorded or otherwise unconfirmed cases.
In recent comments to National Geographic, Amber D’Souza—professor of epidemiology at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health in Maryland—succinctly highlighted just how much higher the actual numbers could be.
“It’s quite possible that the number of deaths is double what we see,” D’Souza said. “But five million is such a staggering number on its own. No country has been able to escape it.”
With boosters now rolling out at a wider scale here in the States, there is—unfortunately, frustratingly, etc.—still a troubling amount of people who are refusing to even begin their vaccine regimen while citing a variety of non-reasons. To be clear, the COVID-19 vaccine is indeed all of the following: safe, effective, and widely available at no cost. If you still haven’t gotten a vaccine, click here to find an appointment in your area.
