LONDON – The pandemic is reaching new deadly levels around the world, the WHO warned this week, even as the focus in some countries, including the United States, has shifted to the speed with which to calm restrictions as vaccination figures increase.
“All over the world, cases and deaths continue to rise at a worrying rate,” said WHO Director-General Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, at a press conference on Friday. “Globally, the number of new cases a week has almost doubled in the last two months. It is approaching the highest infection rate we have seen so far during the pandemic. Some countries that had previously avoided widespread transmission now see strong increases in infections “.
The bulk of the new infections have been seen in Brazil and India, the second and third most affected countries. Earlier this week, the non-governmental organization Doctors Without Borders warned that Brazil’s coronavirus response had led the country to a “humanitarian catastrophe.” The country did not impose an effective, centralized response and accounted for more than a quarter of global deaths from COVID-19 over the past week, the group said.
Some experts have warned that recommendations for social distancing have been ignored in India and this week the government desperately asked citizens to wear masks.
“If we all start wearing masks from today or tomorrow, we will see an immediate drop in this,” Vinod Kumar Paul, a member of the government’s planning committee, said at a press conference on 13 ‘April. Do not agglutinate. We need to maintain social distancing and hygiene, because this virus will definitely stop. And we have repeatedly said that wearing a mask is an effective social vaccine, which we should start today. “
Of the 1,185 deaths daily reported in India 24 hours before Friday, about a third were in the state of Maharashtra, home of Bombay, which was closed this week.
Still, the sacred festival of Kumbh Mela has seen millions of Indians travel across the country, with images showing devotees bathing in the Ganges without respect for social distancing, and hundreds of positive cases have been associated with the festival. , according to the BBC. In recent weeks, the country has reported more than 100,000 new confirmed cases daily.
With the country struggling to contain the spread of coronavirus, vaccine exports have been suspended at the country’s Serum Institute, which produces most of the doses of AstraZeneca vaccine distributed by the COVAX program. India has vaccinated more than 100 million citizens so far, according to the country’s health ministry.
And in Europe, where most countries have adopted blockades to deal with rising infection rates, WHO Regional Director Hans Kluge announced that more than a million killed by COVID-19 in the European region.
“The situation in our region is serious: 1.6 million new cases are reported every week,” he told a news conference on Thursday. “It’s 9,500 every hour, 160 people every minute. Only among the oldest do we see the incidence decrease.”
On Monday, parts of the UK temporarily came out of a month-long closure, with al fresco dining at bars and restaurants, as well as shops, opening to customers. Now, the country reports some of the lowest percentages of cases and deaths in Europe, which Prime Minister Boris Johnson wanted to stress was that it was the work of the closures, not the vaccinations.
“But it is very, very important for everyone to understand that the vaccination program has not succeeded in reducing these numbers (in hospitalizations, in deaths and infections),” he said this week. “I don’t think people appreciate that it’s the blockade that’s been overwhelmingly important to achieve that improvement.”
Even countries that were initially praised for their treatment of the pandemic, such as Germany, are now struggling, according to Reuters. German doctors have called for measures to deal with the worsening of situations in hospitals, with Angela Merkel having secured new powers to impose local closures if cases exceed a certain threshold.
And while Britain relaxes its blockade laws, France entered a national blockade earlier this month. The country became the third country in Western Europe – after the United Kingdom and Italy – to record more than 100,000 coronavirus deaths.