Global Covid-19 death toll crosses 5mn mark
While it took just over a year for the toll to hit 2.5mn, the next 2.5mn deaths were recorded in just under eight months
WASHINGTON: Worldwide deaths related to Covid-19 surpassed 5 million on Friday, according to a Reuters tally, with unvaccinated people particularly exposed to the virulent Delta strain. More than half of all global deaths reported on a seven-day average were in the United States, Russia, Brazil, Mexico and India.
While it took just over a year for the Covid-19 death toll to hit 2.5 million, the next 2.5 million deaths were recorded in just under eight months, according to a Reuters analysis.
An average of 8,000 deaths were reported daily across the world over the last week, or around five deaths every minute. However, the global death rate has been slowing in recent weeks.
There has been increasing focus in recent days on getting vaccines to poorer nations, where many people are yet to receive a first dose, even as their richer counterparts have begun giving booster shots.
More than half of the world
has yet to receive at least one dose of a Covid-19 vaccine, according to Our World in Data.
The World Health Organization (WHO) this week said its Covax distribution programme would, for the first time, distribute shots only to countries with the lowest levels of coverage.
Co-led by the WHO, Covax has since January largely allocated doses proportionally
among its 140-plus beneficiary states according to population size. “For the October supply, we designed a different methodology, only covering participants with low sources of supply,” Mariangela Simao, WHO assistant director general for access to vaccines, said in a recording of a conference presentation last week posted on the WHO’S website.
US toll above 700,000
The United States, which has been battling vaccine misinformation that has caused about one-third of the population to avoid inoculations, surpassed 700,000 deaths on Friday, the highest toll of any country.
US cases and hospitalisations have been trending lower, but health officials are bracing for a possible resurgence as cooler
weather forces more activities indoors.
Meanwhile, US health officials are hoping data on Israeli military personnel can help clarify the risk of heart muscle inflammation in younger people who have received Pfizer/biontech booster shots - a potential factor for US regulators as they consider granting full approval of these boosters.