U.S. COVID-19 DEATH TOLL THIS YEAR SET TO TOP TOTAL FATALITIES FROM 2020
MOSCOW/PARIS: The Covid-19 death toll in the US this year is poised to surpass the number of fatalities in 2020. The wave fuelled by the Delta variant is waning in the US, but daily infections are still hovering near 100,000 and more than 1,800 people are dying every day, on average.
The US has the world’s highest death count at more than 703,000, of which 351,985 were recorded in 2020, according to data compiled by Johns Hopkins University and Bloomberg. The toll for 2021 has crossed 351,000 as of Tuesday morning.
More than a 100,000 Americans succumbed to the virus in the last four months - a time when safe and effective vaccines were widely available in the nation.
Meanwhile, coronavirus deaths in Russia hit a record for the third time this month on Tuesday, and new infections once again exceeded 25,000 a day. Russia’s state coronavirus task force reported 25,110 new confirmed cases on Tuesday and 895 new deaths - the country’s highest daily death toll in the pandemic.
This month, records in fatalities came every other day: the previous record, of 890 deaths, was registered on Sunday, and the one before that, of 887 deaths, occurred on Friday.
New Zealand said on Tuesday that it will start using vaccine certificates as proof of inoculation at large events and other high-risk settings from next month, as the country battles the spread of the Delta variant.
Pfizer effectiveness falls
The effectiveness of the PfizerBioNTech vaccine in preventing infection by the coronavirus dropped to 47% from 88% six months after the second dose, according to data published on Monday in the Lancet medical journal.
The analysis showed that the vaccine’s effectiveness in preventing hospitalisation and death remained high at 90% for at least six months.
New York State’s largest health care provider, Northwell Health, has fired 1,400 employees who refused to get Covid-19 vaccinations. The fired employees represent a small percentage of Northwell’s workforce of more than 76,000, all of whom are now inoculated.