BRASILIA (Reuters) – More than 1 million people have died from COVID-19 in the Americas, the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO) said Wednesday.
In the past week alone, 2 million more cases were reported in America, with the United States being the leading cause of the outbreak, the WHO regional arm said. According to a report by Reuters, there have been more than 100 million cases and 2.1 million deaths worldwide, with 44 million cases in the Americas.
Across North America, there is an increasing pressure on hospital capacity, and in some US states, nearly 80% of IC beds are used to treat COVID-19 patients, PAHO chief Carissa Etienne said in a virtual briefing.
Similar figures are seen in many states in Mexico, where the number of cases is tripling in some regions, she warned.
The hospital situation in Brazil is of particular concern, with three-quarters of the ICU beds in many Brazilian states, she said.
In Manaus, many patients wait for hospital beds to collapse under the pressure of a second wave of coronavirus infections complicated by a new variant of the virus being detected there.
Variants that originated in the region or beyond have been detected in 14 countries in the Americas, PAHO said.
Only a few cases of the British and South African mutations have been found, mainly in travelers, and they do not appear to be spreading in the region, according to PAHO, but the Amazon variant that has shown up in the Brazilian city of Manaus does appear. to have a high transmission speed.
PAHO expects the deployment of COVID-19 vaccines made available to poorer countries through the UN-led COVAX facility to begin in March, with approximately 164 million doses.
The COVAX facility is expected to deploy 2 billion doses worldwide.
Reporting by Anthony Boadle; Editing by Lisa Shumaker