Official global Covid-19 death toll exceeds four million
The world’s known Covid-19 death toll has passed four million, according to the Centre for Systems Science and Engineering at Johns Hopkins University, the equivalent to around half of London’s population.
Taking just nine months to cause one million deaths, the rate at which coronavirus has swept through communities has quickened.
The second million lives were lost in three and a half months, another million in three months and the fourth in around two and a half months.
However, these figures are the officially reported ones, but it is expected that the true number of pandemic-related deaths will be higher.
“The numbers may not tell the complete story, and yet they’re still really staggering numbers globally,” epidemiologist at Johns Hopkins University’s Bloomberg School of Public Health, Jennifer Nuzzo, said.
The Delta variant, now the most prevalent strain in the UK, has pushed infection and death rates higher.
But vaccines, which are effective against Covid-19 and its Delta strain, have prevented infections from spiralling out of control.
Although there is currently a spike in cases in the UK, there have been fewer hospitalisations and deaths as a result of its successful vaccination programme.