The global death toll from the coronavirus topped a staggering 3 million people Saturday amid repeated setbacks in the worldwide vaccination campaign and a deepening crisis in places such as Brazil, India and France.
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And the true number is believed to be significantly higher because of possible government concealment and the many cases overlooked in the early stages of the outbreak that began in Wuhan, China, at the end of 2019.
Worldwide, deaths are on the rise again, running at around 12,000 per day on average, and new cases are climbing too, eclipsing 700,000 a day.
When the world back in January passed the bleak threshold of 2 million deaths, immunization drives had just started in Europe and the United States. Today, they are underway in more than 190 countries, though progress in bringing the virus under control varies widely.
While the campaigns in the US and Britain have hit their stride and people and businesses there are beginning to contemplate life after the pandemic, other places, mostly poorer countries but some rich ones as well, are lagging behind in putting shots in arms and have imposed new lockdowns and other restrictions as virus cases soar.
In Israel, where the vaccination drive has been the most robust, there has been a dramatic decline in morbidity rates across the country.
"This is not the situation we want to be in 16 months into a pandemic, where we have proven control measures," said Maria Van Kerkhove, one of the World Health Organization's leaders on COVID-19.
In India, where the situation has become increasingly dire, over 180,000 new infections were recorded in one 24-hour span during the past week and 234,000 new cases were recorded over the weekend, the highest such figure worldwide.
On Friday, Israel recorded seven cases of the Indian coronavirus variant, the Health Ministry confirmed.
The variant known as B.1.617 has two mutations, sparking fears it could be more infectious or less susceptible to vaccines.
The carriers are unvaccinated Israeli nationals returning from abroad, the ministry said in a statement.
In Brazil, where deaths are running at about 3,000 per day, accounting for one-quarter of the lives lost worldwide in recent weeks, the crisis has been likened to a "raging inferno" by one WHO official. A more contagious variant of the virus has been rampaging across the country.
As cases surge, hospitals are running out of critical sedatives. As a result, there have been reports of some doctors diluting what supplies remain and even tying patients to their beds while breathing tubes are pushed down their throats.
The slow vaccine rollout has crushed Brazilians' pride in their own history of carrying out huge immunization campaigns that were the envy of the developing world.
The challenges facing India reverberate beyond its borders since the country is the biggest supplier of shots to COVAX, the UN-sponsored program to distribute vaccines to poorer parts of the world. Last month, India said it would suspend vaccine exports until the virus's spread inside the country slows.
The WHO recently described the supply situation as precarious. Up to 60 countries might not receive any more shots until June, by one estimate. To date, COVAX has delivered about 40 million doses to more than 100 countries, enough to cover barely 0.25% of the world's population.
Globally, about 87% of the 700 million doses dispensed have been given out in rich countries. While 1 in 4 people in wealthy nations have received a vaccine, in poor countries the figure is 1 in more than 500.
In recent days, the US and some European countries put the use of Johnson & Johnson's COVID-19 vaccine on hold while authorities investigate extremely rare but dangerous blood clots. AstraZeneca's vaccine has likewise been hit with delays and restrictions because of a clotting scare.
Another concern: Poorer countries are relying on vaccines made by China and Russia, which some scientists believe provide less protection than those made by Pfizer, Moderna and AstraZeneca.
In the US, where over 560,000 lives have been lost, accounting for more than 1 in 6 of the world's COVID-19 deaths, hospitalizations and deaths have dropped, businesses are reopening, and life is beginning to return to something approaching normalcy in several states. The number of Americans filing for unemployment benefits tumbled last week to 576,000, a post-COVID-19 low.
But progress has been patchy, and new hot spots – most notably Michigan – have flared up in recent weeks. Still, deaths in the US are down to about 700 per day on average, plummeting from a mid-January peak of about 3,400.
In Europe, countries are feeling the brunt of a more contagious variant that first ravaged Britain and has pushed the continent's COVID-19-related death toll beyond 1 million.
Close to 6,000 gravely ill patients are being treated in French critical care units, numbers not seen since the first wave a year ago.
Dr. Marc Leone, head of intensive care at the North Hospital in Marseille, said exhausted front-line staff members who were feted as heroes at the start of the pandemic now feel alone and are clinging to hope that renewed school closings and other restrictions will help curb the virus in the coming weeks.
"There's exhaustion, more bad tempers. You have to tread carefully because there are a lot of conflicts," he said. "We'll give everything we have to get through these 15 days as best we can."
In Germany, German Chancellor Angela Merkel on Friday urged parliament to pass a bill that would mandate a nationwide "emergency brake" when the spread of the coronavirus becomes too rapid, saying that it was needed to prevent the health care system from becoming overwhelmed.
"The situation is serious, very serious, and we need to take it seriously," she told lawmakers.
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"There is no way around it. We need to stop this third wave of the pandemic... and to achieve this we need to better combine the strengths of the federal, state and local governments than we have been."
The speech to parliament came as the country recorded 25,831 new cases of COVID-19 overnight last Thursday and 247 additional deaths, according to the Robert Koch Institute disease control center.
France, which imposed a third nationwide lockdown this month to try to stem its third wave of infections, saw its COVID-19 death toll breach the 100,000 mark on Thursday, the eighth-highest in the world.
The French government also decided to impose a strict 10-day quarantine for all travelers coming from Brazil starting April 24, when only people residing in France or holding a French or European Union passport will be allowed to fly to the country.
The same measures will also gradually be put in place by April 24 for people returning from Argentina, Chile and South Africa, where the presence of other coronavirus variants were detected, the French prime minister's office said.
