AREQUIPA, Peru (AP) — COVID-19 has spread misery and despair and exposed stark global inequities on its way to 4 million dead worldwide, the milestone reached Wednesday. In Peru, 43-year-old Javier Vilca jumped to his death from a hospital overcrowded and overwhelmed by the crisis. A single doctor and three nurses were frantically rushing to treat 80 patients while Vilca gasped for breath because of an acute shortage of bottled oxygen. The global death toll, as recorded by Johns Hopkins University, is about equal to the population of Los Angeles or the nation of Georgia. It is three times the number of victims killed in traffic accidents around the world per year.
As global COVID-19 deaths top 4 million, a suicide in Peru
