By Yuliya Talmazan - NBC News
The official death toll from COVID-19 worldwide has exceeded four million, almost equal to the population of Los Angeles, according to data from Johns Hopkins University released Wednesday night.
The World Health Organization (WHO) and public health experts have suggested that this figure, which is reached almost a year and a half after the coronavirus was declared a pandemic, remains
an underestimate of the true count
due to non-deaths. reported or unrecorded worldwide.
The United States continues to lead
the world with the highest number of reported deaths with more than 600,000, followed by Brazil and India.
More than six months after vaccines became available, reported COVID-19 deaths worldwide
have dropped to around 7,900 per day,
after surpassing 18,000 per day in January, the news agency reported. The Associated Press.
The world is regaining a
sense of normalcy,
with the celebration of the Eurocup, postponed by the pandemic, and the Tokyo Olympics, from July 23 to August 8, which were also postponed for a year.
However, the threat continues: the Games will be played without an audience due to the emergency in Japan, and experts fear a spike in infections in the United Kingdom due to the Eurocup matches.
The world economy is beginning to recover however after being hit by coronavirus restrictions.
Even cruise ships, one of the first vectors of the virus's spread, are resuming travel after a hiatus of more than a year.
But while growing vaccination campaigns in the United States and across Europe are ushering in a period of easing of restrictions,
emerging variants of the virus, including the
highly contagious
delta variant
, are spreading rapidly and worry health authorities. .
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) said Tuesday that this is now the dominant variant of the coronavirus in the United States.
Also of concern are the economic and social disparities created and exacerbated during the pandemic.
Last month, the leaders of the seven richest countries in the world agreed to donate 1 billion doses of coronavirus vaccines to the poorest countries over the next year to help close the inequality gap, but the commitment is far away. of the 11 billion doses the WHO has said are needed to vaccinate at least 70% of the world's population.
Nearly 3.3 billion doses of vaccines have been administered worldwide, according to data from the University of Oxford in the UK.
And
only 1% of people in low-income countries have received at least one dose,
according to the university.
