United Nations / 4 mn people now lost lives to COVID, still a long way to defeat pandemic: UN chief

Washington: It has been more than a year since the world was hit with the grave COVID-19 pandemic. With millions of people getting infected and dying every day, the world has now passed the "tragic milestone" of four million recorded deaths, stated World Health Organisation (WHO) Director-General Tedros Ghebreyesus. Subsequently, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres shared the shocking numbers on his official Twitter account. 

WHO update on COVID-19 deaths

Addressing a press conference on COVID-19, WHO Director-General said that, "The world is at a perilous point in this pandemic. We have just passed the tragic milestone of 4 million recorded COVID-19 deaths, which likely underestimates the overall toll. It didn’t have to be this way and it doesn’t have to be this way going forward."

The World Health Organisation took to their official Twitter account to update about the situation. 

"Four million people have now lost their lives as a result of #COVID19. This painful milestone is a reminder of the long way we still have to go to defeat the pandemic. We must move faster - with more vaccines, more equity, and more solidarity", UN Secretary-General tweeted. 

According to the WHO chief, some countries with high vaccination coverage were now "relaxing as though the pandemic is already over", dropping public health social measures and planning to roll out booster shots, ANI. 

COVID-19 crisis in the world

Due to faster-moving virus variants and some countries under the threat of a third wave of coronavirus are witnessing a rise in infections and hospitalisation. Also, the availability of vaccines has become a factor in causing a hike in coronavirus cases. 

"This is leading to an acute shortage of oxygen, treatments and driving a wave of death in parts of Africa, Asia, and Latin America."

"Vaccine nationalism, where a handful of nations have taken the lion’s share, is morally indefensible and an ineffective public health strategy against a respiratory virus that is mutating quickly and becoming increasingly effective at moving from human to human," he added. 

According to the data shared by WHO as of 7th July, there have been 184,324,026 confirmed cases of COVID-19 infections followed by the recent update of four million COVID-19 deaths.