The United States on Thursday opened more distance between itself and much of the rest of the world, approaching the 200 millionth vaccine administered in a race to protect the population from COVID-19, just like other countries, rich and poor. , struggling with a stubbornly high infection. rates and deaths.
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, nearly half of American adults have received at least one dose of the vaccine, and about 30% of adults in the US have been fully vaccinated. But the picture is still relentlessly grim in parts of Europe, Latin America, Africa, and Asia, as variants of the virus fuel an increase in new cases and the global death toll approaching nearly 3 million.
France passed 100,000 virus deaths on Thursdayand only became the eighth country to do so.
India’s two largest cities, New Delhi and Mumbai, imposed business closures and strict movement restrictions when new infections exceeded 200,000. Some hotels and banquet halls were ordered to convert their space into virus patient treatment units, and the wave forced India – a major vaccine producer – to delay the export of doses to other countries.
Japan also saw a rapid resurgence of infections just three months before the Olympics were scheduled. The western metropolis of Osaka reported more than 1,200 new infections on Thursday, the highest number since the start of the pandemic. A top official from the ruling party suggested the possibility of canceling the games if the infections make them impossible.
Troubling signs also emerged in the US, despite the good news that more than 198 million coronavirus infections have been conducted nationwide. The seven-day average of daily shots reached 2.9 million last week.
The number of new daily infections in the US has increased by 11% in the past two weeks. Many US states have lifted mask mandates and restrictions on companies and public gatherings. But in some states, more sick people are being admitted to hospitals, including Michigan, which is leading the nation with nearly 8,000 new infections per day.
In suburban Detroit, Dr. Nick Gilpin of Beaumont Health, an increasing group of coronavirus patients with a ‘runaway train’. Staff used tents to accommodate the flow of people seeking emergency care from Michigan’s largest hospital system, which treated more than 800 patients for COVID-19 on Thursday. That’s more than about 500 two weeks ago.
“Our COVID-19 numbers are rising higher and faster, and it’s very troubling and alarming to see this,” said John Fox, CEO of Beaumont Health, which operates eight hospitals.
Statewide coronavirus patients were near record numbers in Michigan, where 3,960 people with confirmed infections were hospitalized Wednesday.
While half of U.S. adults are still completely unvaccinated, declining demand for coronavirus admissions has been reported by some Alabama and Missouri hospitals. Both states are already lagging behind the nation in vaccinating their populations.
In Alabama, only 37% of adults have received even one dose of vaccine. Still, East Alabama Medical Center near Auburn University said it was preparing to phase out its vaccination program in a county where less than 18% are fully vaccinated.
“The number of vaccine applications has reached a plateau,” hospital spokesman John Atkinson said in a statement.
Cullman Regional Medical Center north of Birmingham also cited declining demand in a statement announcing that the vaccination clinic was moving to an emergency care center. Hospital spokeswoman Lindsey Dossey later said the drop in demand was due to “increased access to the vaccine” in other locations.
Missouri health officials are also concerned that not enough people are looking for shots. A large federally operated vaccination site in downtown St. Louis manages less than half of its capacity of 3,000 injections per day. Missouri Health Department spokeswoman Lisa Cox said the number of public health agencies requesting a vaccine last week fell by half from a week earlier.
“Some of them feel like they’ve really hit a wall as far as they’re interested,” Cox said, adding that the state plans to launch an awareness campaign soon.
In other developments, the US government reported on Thursday that some vaccinated people have become ill from the coronavirus, as expected, although such cases are rare. The CDC said about 5,800 of the “breakthrough” infections have been confirmed. That is of the roughly 75 million Americans who have been fully vaccinated, but the agency warned that reporting of such cases is uneven and incomplete.
Serious illness among vaccinated Americans is even rarer, with less than 400 hospitalized and 74 dying. As with the flu, people who get COVID-19 after being vaccinated are more likely to have a milder illness than unvaccinated people, the CDC said.
More than a third of the world’s deaths have occurred in three countries: the United States, Mexico and Brazil, where a total of more than 1.1 million people have died. The virus takes about 12,000 lives every day.
The recent decision to suspend the use of the Johnson & Johnson vaccine due to preliminary reports of rare blood clots left South Africa without a shot in the fight against an aggressive coronavirus variant. South Africa has more than 1.5 million confirmed cases of COVID-19, including at least 53,000 deaths, representing more than 30% of all confirmed cases in Africa’s 54 countries.
Meanwhile, Germany’s Ministry of Health announced that the country managed a national record of more than 738,000 vaccination shots on Wednesday, although authorities also warned that hospitals were seeing a dramatic increase in the number of coronavirus patients.
Bynum reported from Savannah, Georgia. Associated Press writers Ed White in Detroit, Jay Reeves in Birmingham, Alabama, Mike Stobbe in New York, and Heather Hollingsworth in Mission, Kansas contributed to this report.