The number of confirmed cases of the coronavirus-borne disease COVID-19 rose to more than 142 million on Tuesday, and India remained a hotspot, with more than 250,000 new infections and more than 1,700 deaths in the last 24 hours alone.
The capital, New Delhi, was shut down again on Monday in an effort to curb an increase in the number of cases with hospital overflows, intensive care units full and oxygen scarcity.
India is part of a wave of new cases driving the global number higher even as some countries, including the US, are making good progress on vaccination, eclipsing the scale of the crisis in other places, including Brazil and France . The wave is partly due to new variants that are more contagious than the original virus.
India reports more coronavirus infections and deaths than any other country every day, while the economy has contracted at record speed. WSJ explains what is at stake for the nation of nearly 1.4 billion people. Photo: Naveen Sharma / SOPA Images via ZUMA Thread
But the high contamination rate in India is also due to some recent superspreader events, including a Hindu festival where many gathered to bathe in the Ganges River while not wearing a face mask, as well as some busy election rallies.
The US State Department warns against travel to India and the UK has added the country to the “red list” for travel. Hong Kong has banned all flights from India, and Singapore has added a week to the 14-day quarantine period it requires of travelers, according to the Straits Times.
India’s burden is also overwhelming for vaccination efforts, and that has implications for the world as India is the largest producer of vaccines. The country had to delay deliveries to other places to keep up with domestic demand. On Monday, the government said it would expand the vaccine program to every adult, but it’s unclear how it will meet that offer, the AP said.
Meanwhile, the World Health Organization raised the issue of vaccine equality again on Monday, urging rich countries not to include vaccines, noting that if poorer countries are not vaccinated, more variants may simply emerge and possibly one that will not respond to current vaccines. .
Environmentalist Greta Thunberg took part in a WHO newsletter with the news that she will donate 100,000 euros ($ 120,000) through her foundation to the WHO Foundation to support its Covax program, which aims to distribute vaccines to the most risky countries in the poorer countries of the US. world.
In case you missed it: UN chief joins WHO to beat rich countries for bringing in COVID vaccines
“The international community must do more to address the tragedy of vaccine inequality,” Sweden’s Thunberg told reporters. “We have the resources at our disposal to correct the great imbalance that exists around the world today in the fight against COVID-19. As with the climate crisis, we must first help those who are most vulnerable.
On average, 1 in 4 people in high-income countries has received a coronavirus vaccine, compared to just one in more than 500 in low-income countries.
In the US, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s vaccine tracker shows that as of 6 a.m. ET Monday, 264.5 million doses had been delivered to states, 211.6 million doses had been given, and 132.3 million people had received at least one injection , equal to 39.9% of the population.
85.4 million people are fully vaccinated, equal to 25.7% of the population, meaning they received two injections of the two-dose vaccines developed by Pfizer Inc.PFE,
and German partner BioNTech SE BNTX,
and Moderna Inc. MRNA,
or a shot of the Johnson & Johnson JNJ,
single vaccine. The AstraZeneca vaccine is not approved for use in the US.
Among Americans 65 and older, 35.5 million people are fully vaccinated, equal to 64.9% of that group. Nearly 44 million people in that age group have received a first shot, which is equivalent to 80.1% of that population.
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In other news:
• Two companies reported on the US earnings season on Tuesday with a focus on COVID-19. Johnson & Johnson reported better-than-expected first-quarter numbers and said sales of COVID vaccines added $ 100 million to revenue. Abbot Labs ABT,
Meanwhile, its profits have more than tripled as it generated $ 1.8 billion of its $ 2.2 billion in sales from COVID testing.
• The United States Department of State urged Americans to reconsider any planned international travel and said it would issue specific warnings not to visit about 80% of the world’s countries because of the risks of the coronavirus pandemic, reported the AP. The US has not received a global advisory warning against international travel since August, when the guidelines were repealed by the previous government. The department’s advice is not formal global advice. Instead, it says the State Department will start using Centers for Disease Control and Prevention standards when drafting health and safety guidelines for individual countries. Because of those standards, about 80% of countries are classified as ‘level 4’ or ‘no travel’.
Read:What Does a Strong Response to a COVID-19 Vaccine Mean?
• The coronavirus pandemic has been used as a reason to block journalists’ access to information resources and field reporting, reported the nonprofit Reporter without Borders. The organization’s World Press Freedom Index 2021 found that journalism, “the vaccine against disinformation”, has been blocked in more than 130 countries, accounting for 73% of the 180 countries it evaluated. “The data shows that journalists are finding it increasingly difficult to investigate and report sensitive stories, especially in Asia, the Middle East and Europe,” the report said. Journalists have been subject to intimidation and threats, strict media laws, and even the criminalization of reports considered critical of government responses to the crisis, such as shortages of medical supplies or rising death tolls. That list includes Brazil, Egypt, Iran and China, the report shows.
Index region by region:
Source: Reporters without Borders
• The European Medicines Agency said its safety committee concluded that a warning about unusual low platelet blood clots should be added to the product information for Johnson & Johnson’s COVID vaccine, which it said had benefits outweighing the risk of ‘very rare ‘ side effects. Effects. All eight cases in the US, after more than 7 million vaccinations, occurred in people under 60 years of age within three weeks of vaccination, and mostly in women. The cases studied were very similar to those that occurred with the COVID-19 vaccine developed by AstraZeneca AZN,
AZN,
said the EMA. The rollout of the Johnson & Johnson vaccine in Europe was interrupted by the company.
See now: Getting COVID puts you at a much higher risk of rare blood clots than vaccines, Oxford study finds
• The European Union will have sufficient vaccine doses by mid-July to cover 70% of adults, the Guardian reported, citing Internal Markets Commissioner Thierry Breton, who is responsible for vaccines in the trade bloc. “Fifty-three factories produce vaccines in the EU. Our continent is now the largest producer in the world, after the United States, ”Commissioner for Internal Markets Thierry Breton French daily Le Figaro told in an interview. The 70% threshold is important because some experts say it is necessary to reach “herd immunity,” or the point where the virus has too few hosts to multiply.
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The global figure for the coronavirus-borne disease soared above 142 million on Tuesday, according to Johns Hopkins data, as the death toll rose to over 3.03 million after crossing the 3 million mark on Saturday.
The US leads the world in wide-margin cases and deaths, with 31.7 million cases, or more than 20% of the global total, while the 567,729 death toll makes up about 20% of the global toll.
Outside the US, Brazil ranks third after India with 13.9 million cases and second with a death toll of 374,682.
Mexico ranks third in the number of deaths with 212,466 and the 14th highest number of cases at 2.3 million.
The UK has 4.4 million cases and 127,524 deaths, the highest in Europe and the fifth highest in the world.
China, where the virus was first discovered late last year, has had 102,272 confirmed cases and 4,845 deaths, according to official figures.