THE GLEANER, MONDAY, MARCH 7, 2022 | www.jamaica-gleaner.com | NEWS A7 BANGKOK (AP): T HE OFFICIAL global death toll from COVID-19 is on the verge of eclipsing six million – underscoring that the pandemic, now in its third year, is far from over. The milestone is the latest tragic reminder of the unrelenting nature of the pandemic even as people are shedding masks, travel is resuming and businesses are reopening around the globe. The death toll, compiled by Johns Hopkins University, stood at 5,996,882 as of Sunday morning and was expected to pass the six million mark later in the day. Remote Pacific islands, whose isolation had protected them for more than two years, are just now grappling with their first outbreaks and deaths, fuelled by the highly contagious Omicron variant. Hong Kong, which is seeing deaths soar, is testing its entire population of 7.5 million three times this month as it clings tomainland China’s“zero-COVID”strategy. As death rates remain high in Poland, Hungary, Romania and other Eastern European countries, the region has seen more than onemillion refugees arrive from war-torn Ukraine, a country with poor vaccination coverage and high rates of cases and deaths. WEALTH AND VACCINE And despite its wealth and vaccine availability, the United States is nearing one million reported deaths on its own. Death rates worldwide are still highest among people unvaccinated against the virus, said Tikki Pang, a visiting professor at the National University of Singapore’s medical school and co-chair of the Asia Pacific Immunization Coalition. “This is a disease of the unvaccinated – look what is happening in Hong Kong right now, the health system is being overwhelmed,” said Pang, the former director of research policy and cooperation with theWorld Health Organization. “The large majority of the deaths and the severe cases are in the unvaccinated, vulnerable segment of the population.” It took the world seven months to record its first million deaths from the virus after the pandemic began in early 2020. Four months later, another million people had died and one million have died every three months since, until the death toll hit five million at the end of October. Now it has reached six million – more than the populations of Berlin and Brussels combined, or the entire state of Maryland. CORONAVIRUS DEATHS But despite the enormity of the figure, the world undoubtedly hit its six millionth death some time ago. Poor record-keeping and testing in many parts of the world has led to an undercount in coronavirus deaths, in addition to excess deaths related to the pandemic but not from actual COVID-19 infections, like people who died from preventable causes but could not receive treatment because hospitals were full. Edouard Mathieu, head of data for the OurWorld in Data portal, said that – when countries’ excess mortality figures are studied – as many as nearly four times the reported death toll have likely died because of the pandemic. An analysis of excess deaths by a teamat The Economist estimates that the number of COVID-19 deaths is between 14 million and 23.5 million. “Confirmed deaths represent a fraction of the true number of deaths due to COVID, mostly because of limited testing, and challenges in the attribution of the cause of death,”Mathieu told AP. “In some, mostly rich, countries that fraction is high and the official tally can be considered to be fairly accurate, but in others it is highly underestimated.” The United States has the biggest official death toll in the world, but the numbers have been trending downward over the last month. The world has seen more than 445 million confirmed COVID-19 cases, and new weekly cases have been declining recently in all regions except for the Western Pacific, which includes China, Japan and South Korea, among others, the World Health Organization reported this week. Death toll nears six million as pandemic enters its third year BARCELONA (AP): THE RUSSIAN tanks and missiles besieging Ukraine also are threatening the food supply and livelihoods of people in Europe, Africa and Asia who rely on the vast, fertile farmlands of the Black Sea region – known as the “breadbasket of the world”. Ukrainian farmers have been forced to neglect their fields as millions flee, fight or try to stay alive. Ports are shut down that send wheat and other food staples worldwide to be made into bread, noodles and animal feed. And there are worries Russia, another agricultural powerhouse, could have its grain exports upended by Western sanctions. While there have not yet been global disruptions to wheat supplies, prices have surged 55 per cent since a week before the invasion amid concerns about what could happen next. If the war is prolonged, countries that rely on affordable wheat exports fromUkraine could face shortages starting in July, International Grains Council director Arnaud Petit told AP. That could create food insecurity and throw more people into poverty in places like Egypt and Lebanon, where diets are dominated by governmentsubsidised bread. In Europe, officials are preparing for potential shortages of products from Ukraine and increased prices for livestock feed that could mean more expensive meat and dairy if farmers are forced to pass along costs to customers. Russia and Ukraine combine for nearly a third of the world’s wheat and barley exports. Ukraine also is a major supplier of corn and the global leader in sunflower oil, used in food processing. The war could reduce food supplies just when prices are at their highest levels since 2011. PROLONGED CONFLICT A prolonged conflict would have a big impact some 1,500 miles (2,400 kilometres) away in Egypt, the world’s largest wheat importer. Millions rely on subsidised bread made from Ukrainian grains to survive, with about a third of people living in poverty. “Wars mean shortages, and shortages mean (price) hikes,” Ahmed Salah, a 47-year-old father of seven, said in Cairo. “Any hikes will be catastrophic not only for me, but for the majority of the people.” Anna Nagurney, a professor of supply chains, logistics and economics at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, said: “Wheat, corn, oils, barley, flour are extremely important to food security ... especially in the poorer parts of the globe.” With Ukrainianmen being called on to fight, she said: “Who’s going to be doing the harvesting?Who’d be doing the transportation?” Egypt’s state procurer of wheat, which normally buys heavily from Russia and Ukraine, had to cancel two orders in less than a week: one for overpricing, the other because a lack of companies offered to sell their supplies. Sharp spikes in the cost of wheat globally could severely affect Egypt’s ability to keep bread prices at their current subsidised level. “Bread is extremely heavily subsidised in Egypt, and successive governments have found that cuts to those subsidies are the one straw that should be kept off the camel’s back at all costs,” Mirette Mabrouk, a senior fellow at the Middle East Institute, wrote in a recent analysis. War-ravaged Syria recently announced it would cut spending and ration staples. In nearby Lebanon, where a massive explosion at the Beirut port in 2020 destroyed the country’s main grain silos, authorities are scrambling to make up for a predicted wheat shortage, with Ukraine providing 60 per cent of its supply. They are in talks with the US, India and Canada to find other sources for a country already in financial meltdown. Russian war in world’s ‘breadbasket’ threatens food supply LVIV (AP): A SECOND attempt to evacuate civilians from a besieged city in southern Ukraine collapsed Sunday amid renewed Russian shelling, while Russian President Vladimir Putin turned the blame for the war back on Ukraine and said the invasion could be halted “only if Kyiv ceases hostilities”. Food, water, medicine and almost all other supplies were in desperately short supply in the besieged port city of Mariupol, where Russian and Ukrainian forces had agreed to an 11-hour ceasefire that would allow civilians and the wounded to be evacuated. But Russian attacks quickly closed the humanitarian corridor, Ukrainian officials said. “There can be no ‘green corridors’ because only the sick brain of the Russians decides when to start shooting and at whom,” Interior Ministry adviser Anton Gerashchenko said on Telegram. The news dashed hopes that more people could escape the fighting in Ukraine, where Russia’s plan to quickly overrun the country has been stymied by fierce resistance. Russia has made significant advances in southern Ukraine and along the coast, but many of its efforts have become stalled, including an immense military convoy that has been almost motionless for days north of Kyiv. Ukrainian President Voldymyr Zelenskyy rallied his people to remain defiant, especially those in cities that Russian soldiers have entered. UKRAINIAN TELEVISION “You should take to the streets! You should fight!”he said Saturday on Ukrainian television. “It is necessary to go out and drive this evil out of our cities, fromour land.” The war, now in its 11th day, has caused 1.5 million people to flee the country. The head of the UN refugee agency called the exodus “the fastest-growing refugee crisis in Europe since WorldWar II”. As he has often done, Putin blamed Ukraine for the war, telling Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Sunday that Kyiv needed to stop all hostilities and fulfill “the well-known demands of Russia”. Those demands include what Putin has called the“denazification” of Ukraine, which he falsely claims is led by neo-Nazis intent on undermining Russia. Putin also told Erdogan he hoped Ukraine “would show a more constructive approach (to talks), fully taking into account the emerging realities”. A third round Russian attacks halt plans to evacuate civilians Top US official travels to Haiti BEIJING (AP): FOURTEEN WORKERS who were trapped when a coal mine in southwest China collapsed 10 days ago have died, media reported Sunday. A rescue operation finished Sunday noon after the bodies of the miners were retrieved, stateowned Xinhua News Agency said. The workers were trapped after the roof of a shaft at Sanhe Shunxun coal mine in Guizhou province collapsed on February 25. The rescue operation was challenging because the roof caved in about three kilometres (1.9 miles) from the entrance of the mine, and the collapsed area was considerably large, media reported. Further investigation into the cause of the accident was under way. China’s coal mines are among the world’s deadliest, regularly suffering explosions and gas leaks despite repeated safety crackdowns. SPAIN THAILAND of Russia-Ukraine negotiations is scheduled for Monday. Putin and French President Emmanuel Macron spoke Sunday about the nuclear situation in Ukraine, which has 15 nuclear power plants and was the scene of the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear disaster. The men agreed in principle to a “dialogue” involving Russia, Ukraine and the UN’s atomic watchdog, according to a French official who spoke on condition of anonymity, in line with the presidency’s practices. Potential talks on the issue are to be organised in the coming days, he said. Putin also blamed the fire last week at the Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant, which Ukrainian officials said was caused by Russian attackers, on a “provocation organised by Ukrainian radicals”. “Attempts to shift responsibility for this incident onto the Russian military are part of a cynical propaganda campaign,” he said, according to the French official. International leaders, as well as Pope Francis, appealed to Putin to negotiate. In a highly unusual move, the pope said he had dispatched two cardinals to Ukraine, saying the Vatican would do everything it could to end the conflict. “In Ukraine, rivers of blood and tears are flowing,” the pontiff said in his traditional Sunday blessing. “This is not just a military operation, but a war that sows death, destruction and misery.” After the cease-fire in Mariupol failed to hold Saturday, Russian forces intensified their shelling of the city and dropped massive bombs on residential areas of Chernihiv, a city north of Kyiv, Ukrainian officials said. On Saturday, the emergency coordinator in Ukraine for the international aid group Doctors Without Borders called the situation in Mariupol “catastrophic”. HEAVY DAMAGE The city of 430,000 has “no water, electricity and heating. Internet and phone services have been cut off. Hospitals, supermarkets and residential buildings have suffered heavy damage. And it is not possible to bring any relief supplies into the city,” Laurent Ligozat said in a statement. British military officials compared Russia’s tactics to those Moscow used in Chechnya and Syria, where surrounded cities were pulverised by airstrikes and artillery. “This is likely to represent an effort to break Ukrainian morale,” the UK Ministry of Defense said. Zelenskyy reiterated a request for foreign protectors to impose a no-fly zone over Ukraine, which NATO so far has ruled out because of concerns such an action would lead to a far wider war. “The world is strong enough to close our skies,”Zelenskyy said Sunday in a video address. Oleksiy Arestovich, an adviser to Zelenskyy, said Ukrainian officials and international humanitarian organisations were working with Russia through intermediaries to establish humanitarian corridors from Bucha and Hostomel, which are Kyiv suburbs where there has been heavy fighting. The death toll remains lost in the fog of war, with the UN saying it has confirmed just a few hundred civilian deaths, but also warning that the number is a vast undercount. Ukraine’s military is greatly outmatched by Russia’s, but its professional and volunteer forces have fought back with fierce tenacity. In Kyiv, volunteers lined up Saturday to join the military. Even in cities that have fallen, there were signs of resistance. Onlookers in Chernihiv cheered as they watched a Russianmilitary plane fall from the sky and crash, according to video released by the Ukrainian government. In Kherson, hundreds of protesters waved blue and yellow Ukrainian flags and shouted, “Go home!” UKRAINE CHINA
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