The worldwide COVID-19 death toll has now surpassed 5 million people, according to numbers from the Johns Hopkins University Coronavirus Research Center.
That total includes 197,116 killed by the virus in just the last 28 days.
The tally of total cases now sits at 246.7 million since the discovery of the virus in China near the end of 2019.
"It's another reminder that the COVID-19 pandemic is far from over," World Health Organization (WHO) Director Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said last week as he noted that cases are on the rise in Europe for the first time in over 60 days, increases that outpace the decreases seen in other areas of the world.
"The pandemic persists in large part because inequitable access to tools persists," he said while calling out the disconnect between high-income and low-income parts of the world. Only 3.6% of the 7 billion does of COVID-19 vaccine have been administered in low-income countries, a disparity that also extends to the medical professionals who serve those communities.
"As it is, health workers and vulnerable people in low and middle-income countries remain unprotected, oxygen isn't getting to those who need it, and a lack of testing is leaving many countries blind to how the virus is circulating, and the world blind to emerging variants," he said at a news briefing.
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