Worldwide grief: Death toll from coronavirus tops 1 million

NEW DELHI (AP) — Joginder Chaudhary was his parents’ greatest pride, raised with the little they earned farming a half-acre plot in central India to become the first doctor from their village.

For the coronavirus, though, he was just one more in a million.

After the virus killed the 27-year-old Chaudhary in late July, his mother wept inconsolably. With her son gone, Premlata Chaudhary said, how could she go on living? Three weeks later, on Aug. 18, the virus took her life, too — yet another number in an unrelenting march toward a woeful milestone.

Now, 8 1/2 months after an infection doctors had never seen before claimed its first victims in China, the pandemic's confirmed death toll eclipsed 1 million Tuesday, according to a count by Johns Hopkins University.

That is partly due to the virus’s quickening spread through India, where reported deaths have topped 95,000 and cases are increasing at the fastest rate in the world.

The United States, where the virus has killed about 205,000 people, accounts for 1 out of 5 deaths worldwide, far more than any other country despite its wealth and medical resources.

“It’s not just a number. It’s human beings. It’s people we love,” said Dr. Howard Markel, a professor of medical history at the University of Michigan who has advised government officials on containing pandemics. On a Thursday morning in February, Markel’s mother, 84 and infirm, was stricken by an illness later diagnosed as COVID-19. She died before midnight.

“It’s our brothers, our sisters. It’s people we know,” Markel said. “And if you don’t have that human factor right in your face, it’s very easy to make it abstract.”

Even at 1 million — greater than the population of Jerusalem or Austin, Texas, more than four times the...