NEW DELHI: 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 viruss quickening spread through India,…