It took the world seven months to record its first million virus-related deaths after the pandemic emerged in early 2020. Four months later another million people had died, and another one million have died every three months since, until the death toll hit five million at the end of October.
But Tikki Pang, Visiting Professor of Global Health from the National University of Singapore, fears the true fatality figures are far higher.
"If you set aside the number of confirmed COVID-19 deaths, 6 million, the actual excess mortality is something like 21 million. And as you already mentioned yourself, that takes into account undiagnosed deaths, deaths that happen at home, undercounting, under-reporting because of lack of testing, and that's all happening in the developing countries."
With many countries re-building their economies as their fatality rates fall, this milestone is the latest reminder of the unrelenting, and often unpredictable nature of the virus.
