As Covid Death Toll Passes 3 Million, a Weary World Takes Stock

“It just never crossed your mind that there would be so many dead in so little time,” said one man in Mexico City.

Three million lives: That is roughly equivalent to losing the population of Berlin, Chicago or Taipei. The scale is so staggering that it sometimes begins to feel real only in places like graveyards. The world’s Covid-19 death toll surpassed three million on Saturday, according to a New York Times database. More than 100,000 people have died of Covid-19 in France. The death rate is inching up in Michigan. Morgues in some Indian cities are overflowing with corpses. And as the United States and other rich nations race to vaccinate their populations, new hot spots have emerged in parts of Asia, Eastern Europe and Latin America.