United Nations chief calls coronavirus pandemic 'savage', its toll 'mind-numbing'

The worldwide death toll from the coronavirus eclipsed 1 million on Tuesday

United Nations Israel Palestinians United Nations Secretary General Antonio Guterres

United Nations Secretary General Antonio Guterres says the loss of 1 million people to the coronavirus is an "agonising milestone that has been made worse by the savageness of the disease".

He called it a "mind-numbing figure". "They were fathers and mothers, wives and husbands, brothers and sisters, friends and colleagues," he said. "The pain has been multiplied by the savageness of this disease. Risks of infection kept families from bedsides. And the process of mourning and celebrating a life was often made impossible."

The worldwide death toll from the coronavirus eclipsed 1 million on Tuesday, nine months into a crisis that has devastated the global economy. United States boasted the highest death count of more than 2,00,000 fatalities. The nearly 1 million deaths attributed to the coronavirus in nine months are far more than the 690,000 from AIDS or the 400,000 from malaria in all of 2019. They're trending just behind the 1.5 million from tuberculosis.

"Wealth and power have not shielded rich countries from the awful power of the virus. The United States has been the worst-hit country in the world with more than 6 million coronavirus infections and more than 2,00,000 deaths, reflecting the lack of success that we have had in containing this outbreak," Dr. Anthony Fauci, the nation's top infectious disease specialist, told a Harvard Medical School audience earlier this month.

-Inputs from agencies

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