Over 5 million people around the world have died from COVID-19, according to a tally of reported deaths kept by Johns Hopkins University, though some estimates put the actual death toll at more than twice that number. The staggering milestone comes roughly 20 months after the WHO declared COVID-19 a pandemic and amid persistent global vaccine inequality and a hugely uneven recovery.

Here in the U.S., the Food and Drug Administration granted emergency use authorization for Pfizer-BioNTech’s coronavirus vaccine in children 5 to 11. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is expected to swiftly sign off on the move, making the shots available for some 28 million children as early as this week.