The global death toll from COVID-19 topped 5 million on Monday, less than two years into a crisis that has not only devastated poor countries but also humbled wealthy ones with first-rate health care systems.

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Together, the United States, the European Union, Britain and Brazil – all upper-middle- or high-income countries – account for one-eighth of the world's population but nearly half of all reported deaths. The US alone has recorded over 766,000 lives lost, more than any other nation.

"This is a defining moment in our lifetime," said Dr. Albert Ko, an infectious disease specialist at the Yale School of Public Health. "What do we have to do to protect ourselves so we don't get to another 5 million?"

The death toll, as tallied by Johns Hopkins University, is about equal to the populations of Los Angeles and San Francisco combined. It rivals the number of people killed in battles among nations since 1950, according to estimates from the Peace Research Institute Oslo. Globally, COVID-19 is now the third leading cause of death, after heart disease and stroke.

The staggering figure is almost certainly an undercount because of limited testing and people dying at home without medical attention, especially in poor parts of the world, such as India.

Hot spots have shifted over the 22 months since the outbreak began, turning different places on the world map red. Now, the virus is pummeling Russia, Ukraine and other parts of Eastern Europe. In the 24-hour period from Sunday to Monday alone, COVID killed 1,160 Russians, according to official figures. In eastern Europe, misinformation and distrust in government have hobbled vaccination efforts. In Ukraine, only 17% of the adult population is fully vaccinated; in Armenia, only 7%.

"What's uniquely different about this pandemic is it hit hardest the high-resource countries," said Dr. Wafaa El-Sadr, director of ICAP, a global health center at Columbia University. "That's the irony of COVID-19."

Wealthier nations with longer life expectancies have larger proportions of older people, cancer survivors and nursing home residents, all of whom are especially vulnerable to COVID-19, El-Sadr noted. Poorer countries tend to have larger shares of children, teens and young adults, who are less likely to fall seriously ill from the coronavirus.

India, despite its terrifying delta surge that peaked in early May, now has a much lower reported daily death rate than wealthier Russia, the US or Britain, though there is uncertainty around its figures.

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The seeming disconnect between wealth and health is a paradox that disease experts will be pondering for years. But the pattern that is seen on the grand scale, when nations are compared, is different when examined at closer range. Within each wealthy country, when deaths and infections are mapped, poorer neighborhoods are hit hardest.

In the US, for example, COVID-19 has taken an outsize toll on Black and Hispanic people, who are more likely than white people to live in poverty and have less access to health care.

"When we get out our microscopes, we see that within countries, the most vulnerable have suffered most," Ko said.

Wealth has also played a role in the global vaccination drive, with rich countries accused of locking up supplies. The US and others are already dispensing booster shots at a time when millions across Africa haven't received a single dose, though the rich countries are also shipping hundreds of millions of shots to the rest of the world.

Africa remains the world's least vaccinated region, with just 5% of the population of 1.3 billion people fully covered.

"This devastating milestone reminds us that we are failing much of the world," UN Secretary-General António Guterres said in a written statement. "This is a global shame."

Meanwhile, the battle to pin down the source of the virus continues to cast a pall over relations between the US and China. On Friday, the US Office of the Director of National Intelligence published an updated version of a declassified assessment of the source of the COVID virus, saying that it was apparently unlikely that the riddle would ever be solved and that it was as likely to have been developed in a laboratory setting as occurring naturally.

On Sunday, spokesman for China's foreign minister, Wang Wenbin dismissed the assessment as "lies."

"A lie repeated a thousand times is still a lie", adding that US intelligence services "have a reputation for fraud and deception."

"The tracing of the origins of the novel coronavirus is a serious and complex issue that should and can only be researched through the cooperation of global scientists," Wenbin said.

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Iran said on Tuesday a fourth wave of the coronavirus pandemic had taken hold in western and central areas of the country, triggered by widespread travel and celebrations during the current Iranian New Year holidays.

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"A fourth coronavirus wave has definitely begun in many parts of the west and center of the country and is advancing towards the east," Health Ministry spokeswoman Sima Sadat Lari told state television.

New cases jumped by more than 900 to 10,255 in the past 24 hours, a more-than-three-month high, Lari said. She blamed the surge above all on millions of Iranians traveling or holding family gatherings during Nowruz, the New Year holiday.

Iran, the pandemic's epicenter in the Middle East, has reported a total of almost 1.9 million cases and 62,569 deaths.

Authorities have imposed night-time driving curfews in dozens of cities and towns to try to discourage gatherings.

But many Iranians did not stay home during the two-week New Year period that began on March 20, even though authorities banned travel to and from dozens of "red" (high risk) and "orange" (medium-high risk) cities and towns in efforts to limit a further spread of the virus.

Iran says it has received more than 400,000 of 2 million Sputnik V vaccines on order from Russia, and is awaiting delivery of 4.2 million AstraZeneca shots. Tehran says it has also received 250,000 doses of China's Sinopharm vaccine and part of an order of 500,000 doses of India's COVAXIN.

Iran, which has a population of 83 million, had hoped to receive over 2 million vaccines by March 20 to vaccinate mainly healthcare workers.

The Islamic Republic is developing at least four local vaccine candidates, one in cooperation with Cuba, which are expected to reach production in a few months.

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It's official: Israel has lost over 5,000 men and women to COVID-19. As of Friday morning, the death toll since the pandemic hit Israel early last year stood at 5,019.

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Israel currently has 84,060 active cases of the coronavirus, 1,095 of which are serious, according to Health Ministry data. Of those in serious condition, 326 are on ventilators. Of the 84,055 coronavirus tests carried out, Thursday, 7,168 were found to be positive, for an infection rate of 8.8%.

Due to the high morbidity rate, the government approved an extension to Israel's third national lockdown, which is now set to expire 7 a.m. Sunday.

During the contentious meeting, Defense Minister and Blue and White party head Benny Gantz accused of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of engaging in a "political and health filibuster."

"The truth must be told. The government meeting should have been held yesterday, but you continue to draw things out," he said.

Netanyahu replied that the meeting had been delayed due to Gantz's stipulation legislation to increase fines for violations of coronavirus guidelines be passed for the lockdown to be extended.

Health Ministry officials had sought to extend the lockdown to Sunday night, to protect the 200,000 people that had received the second dose of the vaccine one week ago and as a result would not be fully protected from the virus. Netanyahu supported their demand.

Gantz, on the other hand, argued the lockdown was no longer effective and called for an end to the lockdown.

Finance Minister Israel Katz voiced his support for Gantz.

"Today, we heard [Health Ministry pandemic response team member] Professor [Ran] Belcer say the lockdowns aren't able to solve the problem.  There are no assumptions right now, there are unfounded hopes."

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Health Ministry Director Hezi Levy conceded that "the lockdown is a bit disappointing, but I don't want to think what would have happened without it. You can't say the lockdown didn't help."

Starting Sunday morning, the restriction on movement to 1,000 meters from one's home will be lifted. Sectors in which one service provider works on one client, such as hair and beauty salons, will be allowed to open, as will businesses that do not meet with the public.

Restaurants will now be allowed to offer takeout service.

No decision has yet been made about whether or not to open schools, and the cabinet is slated to vote on the matter by phone next week.

National parks and nature sites will reopen to the public, and bed and breakfast businesses will be allowed to accept reservations from nuclear families.

On Sunday, the cabinet is scheduled to meet to decide on a framework for when and how to allow businesses to reopen.

Meanwhile, the Health Ministry expanded its vaccination campaign to include Israelis aged 16 following a drop in the inoculation rate in recent days.

Netanyahu has called on those aged 50 and over to get vaccinated, saying, "Morbidity in Israel is very high. Unfortunately, there is only a moderate decrease in [the number of] seriously ill patients," which he said was why hospitals continue to be overwhelmed.

He said, "The vaccines work. If you go and get vaccinated, we can slowly exit the coronavirus and carefully and responsibly open up our economy. This is the order of the hour. I am asking for your enlistment to bring people and to get vaccinated. We have the ability to do something no other country has."

So far, 3,370,951 Israelis, nearly 36% of the population, have received the first dose of a COVID-19 vaccine, and 1,965,972 have received their second dose.

Meanwhile, a Health Ministry official who spoke to Israel Hayom said, "We must continue with a very tight lockdown, like in the first lockdown, of at least two weeks to a month. In this time, we could vaccinate another million to two million Israelis. "If we don't continue with a tight and prolonged lockdown," the official warned, "Israel could see thousands more seriously ill patients and dead."

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Since the start of the epidemic in Israel, 113,648 Israelis have contracted the virus. As of Sunday morning, there were 20,151 symptomatic cases.

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Three more people succumbed to the virus on Saturday, bringing the death toll to 909 – more than double what it was on July 24, when the total number of deaths stood at 448. Of all the corona patients to die of the virus in Israel, 90 (nearly 10%) died this past week.

On Sunday there were 892 coronavirus patients hospitalized, 441 of whom were listed in serious condition, including 121 on ventilators.

The only coronavirus units at over 90% capacity were those at Shaare Zedek Medical Center in Jerusalem, Laniado Hospital in Netanyahu, Sheba Medical Center at Tel Hashomer, and the Old Scottish Hospital.

Cities designated "red" because of high rates of COVID spread included Bnei Brak, Tira, Kafr Qasim, Umm al-Fahm, Daliyat al-Carmel, Laqiyya, Maaleh Iron, Yakir, Kisraa-Samia, Furedeis, Tifrach, Kaabiyye-Tabbash-Hajajre, Buka'ata, and Yad Binyamin.

Meanwhile, the percentage of US citizens confirmed to have contracted coronavirus is approaching 2% of the total population. Each day tens of thousands of new cases are identified. Some 186,000 Americans have died of the virus thus far, and the US death toll is expected to exceed 200,000 within a few weeks.

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Using official state health data leaked by an anonymous source, the BBC found that some 42,000 Iranians suffering symptoms of COVID-19 had died as of July 20, compared to the 14,405 cases the Iranian Health Ministry reported for the same period.

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The BBC probe also found that the number of confirmed carriers (451,024) was much larger than the officially-reported 278,827. A second wave hit Iran hard, and in the past few weeks, the nation has seen a sharp rise in the number of confirmed COVID cases within its borders.

According to the medical data obtained by the BBC, the first recorded coronavirus death in Iran occurred on Jan. 22, but it took 28 before any deaths from the virus were reported, in which time the death toll in Iran rose to 52.

Since the start of the coronavirus epidemic in Iran, many people have expressed doubt about the morbidity and mortality figures put out by the regime. In April, a report from Iran's parliament said the national death toll was likely nearly double the officially reported figures. Given insufficient testing, the report said the number of people infected at the time was probably "eight to 10 times" higher than the reported figures.

Discrepancies have been found between what the national government reported and the numbers supplied by local or district authorities. The information reported by the BBC indicated that the Iranian authorities were intentionally downplaying the country's true COVID death toll, even though its health care system has exact figures on the number of ill, dead, and recovered.

According to the leaked Iranian data, Tehran has seen the most deaths from coronavirus in Iran: 8,120. The city of Qom, the initial epicenter of the COVID outbreak in the country, has seen 1,149 deaths from the virus, or one out of every 1,000 residents.

The data also noted that 1,916 of the COVID deaths in Iran were foreign citizens.

The source told the BBC that he or she had leaked the data in an attempt to "shed light on truth" and put a stop to the epidemic being used for "political games."

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