Global Covid-19 death toll surpasses five million, say experts

The US leads all other countries, with more than 745,000 deaths confirmed in total

The nations with the highest reported tolls after the US are, in order, Brazil, India, Mexico and Russia. :Shutterstock

Daniel E. Slotnik   |   TT  |  New York   |   02.11.21: The coronavirus is responsible for more than five million confirmed deaths around the world as of Monday, according to data from the Center for Systems Science and Engineering at Johns Hopkins University. Such a loss would wipe out almost the entire population of Melbourne, Australia, or most of the nation of Singapore.

Experts say that five million is an undercount. Many countries are unable to accurately record the number of people who have died from Covid-19, like India and African nations; experts have questioned the veracity of data from other countries, like Russia.

“All of these estimates still rely on data being available, or someone going and collecting it before antibodies and local memories wane,” said Adam Kucharski, an associate professor at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine who mathematically analyses infectious disease outbreaks. “Globally, there will have been numerous local tragedies going unreported.”

The real number of people lost to Covid-19 could be underestimated by “a multiple of two to 10”, said Denis Nash, an epidemiologist at the City University of New York Graduate School of Public Health and Health Policy.

The pace of confirmed deaths seems to have slowed slightly since the world reached four million in early July, despite the rapid spread of the Delta variant since then — a sign that the spread of vaccines could be having an impact, at least in some parts of the world.

It took nine months for the virus to kill one million people, three and a half more to reach two million, another three to claim three million and about two and a half to exceed four million.

The US leads all other countries, with more than 745,000 deaths confirmed in total. The nations with the highest reported tolls after the US are, in order, Brazil, India, Mexico and Russia.

The global rate of reported deaths climbed over the past two weeks after trending downward for much of September and the first half of October.

New York Times News Service