COVID: More than three million people have died of coronavirus | Al Jazeera

The global death toll from the coronavirus has topped a staggering three million, with cases more than 140 million, amid repeated setbacks in the vaccination campaign and a deepening crisis in places such as Brazil, India and France.

The number of lives lost as of Saturday, as compiled by Johns Hopkins University, is about equal to the population of Kyiv (Ukraine), Caracas (Venezuela) or Lisbon (Portugal). It is higher than Chicago’s population of 2.7 million and equivalent to Philadelphia and Dallas combined.

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 was first reported in Wuhan, China, towards the end of 2019.

When, in January this year, the world passed the bleak threshold of two million deaths, immunisation drives had just started in Europe and the United States.

Today, vaccination is under way in more than 190 countries, though progress in bringing the virus under control varies widely....