Coronavirus: global death toll passes the two million mark
- The grim milestone comes as countries around the globe battle rising infections, despite the gradual roll-out of vaccination campaigns
- Warnings from cash-strapped companies and governments about the economic fallout of the crisis are also piling up
As of Friday, at least 2,000,066 people worldwide had been confirmed dead of the virus that first emerged in Wuhan, China, in late 2019, according to an AFP tally.
The grim milestone came as US pharmaceutical giant Pfizer said shipments of its vaccines would slow for a period in late January – a blow to fledgling campaigns to immunise people against the virus.
The WHO on Friday called for a worldwide acceleration in vaccine roll-outs – as well as a ramp-up in efforts to study the sequencing of the virus, to tackle troubling new strains emerging around the world.
“I want to see vaccination under way in every country in the next 100 days so that health workers and those at high risk are protected first,” Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus told a press conference in Geneva.
His call came as infections snowballed, with 724,000 new cases recorded on average per day globally over the past week, according to AFP’s tally – a record 10 per cent increase on a week earlier.