The death toll from COVID-19 has eclipsed 4 million as the crisis increasingly becomes a race between the vaccine and the highly contagious delta variant.
The tally was reported Wednesday by Johns Hopkins University.
The count of lives lost over the past year and a half is about equal to the number of people killed in battle in all of the world’s wars since 1982.
It is three times the number of people killed in traffic accidents every year. It is about equal to the population of Los Angeles.
Even then, it is widely believed to be an undercount because of overlooked cases or deliberate concealment.
In recent weeks, the delta variant first identified in India has set off alarms.
