Worldwide COVID Deaths Top 6 Million

This morning, the global death toll for COVID-19 has now topped 6 million. As of this writing, COVID has claimed 6,006,152 people all over the world out of nearly 450 million cases (447,352,722) representing a mortality rate of 1.3%. 

The global mortality rate is slightly higher than the U.S. mortality rate of 1.2%. However, U.S. COVID deaths represent 16% of the worldwide total. This has grown a full percent since the world surpassed 5 million COVID deaths on November 1, 2021. More than 960,000 Americans (960,194) have died of COVID and we are likely to cross the 1 million death toll later this month. The country with the next highest death toll is Brazil with just over 650,000 (652,438) comprising 10.9% of the global total. India (515,102), Russia (349,196) and Mexico (319,859) round out the top five in global COVID death toll. Mexico's mortality rate of 5.7% is fourth in the world, just ahead of Syria (5.6%) and behind Peru (6%). The country with the highest mortality rate is Yemen at 18.2%. However, just over 11,000 cases have been confirmed in the Middle Eastern nation beset by civil war. The rate could be a statistical anomaly or might only scratch the surface.

If there is good news in any of this is that the pace of death is continuing to slow down albeit modestly. After taking 117 days to go from 4 million to 5 million COVID deaths, it took 127 days go from 5 million to 6 million deaths. 

With cases receding and fewer Americans willing to get boosted much less vaccinated, the Biden Administration very much wants to vaccinate the rest of the world but funding is a problem and negotiations with Congress have stalled. Then there is also the not so small detail of Russia's invasion of Ukraine which has put COVID on the backburner. One step forward, two steps back - possibly more.