Bangkok Post

Global Covid deaths hit 5 million

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BENGALURU: 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.

The variant has exposed the wide disparitie­s in vaccinatio­n rates between rich and poor nations, and the upshot of vaccine hesitancy in some western nations.

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.

An average of 8,000 deaths were reported daily across the world over the last week, or about 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.

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.

Russia reported 887 coronaviru­s-related deaths on Friday, the largest single-day death toll it has recorded since the pandemic began and the fourth day in a row it has set that record. Only 33% of Russia’s eligible population has received a first vaccine dose.

As a region, South America has the highest death toll in the world accounting for 21% of all reported deaths, followed by North America and Eastern Europe contributi­ng more than 14% of all fatalities each, according to Reuters analysis.

However, India, one of the first countries ravaged by the Delta variant, has gone from an average of 4,000 deaths a day to less than 300 as its vaccinatio­n campaign is rolled out.

About 47% of India’s eligible population has received a first shot, with officials administer­ing around 7,896,950 doses per day over the past week, a Reuters analysis of Our World in Data showed.

The Delta variant is now the dominant strain around the globe and has been reported in 187 out of 194 WHO member countries.

 ?? BLOOMBERG ?? Volunteers deliver the body of a Covid-19 victim to a crematoriu­m in Setia Alam, Malaysia on Tuesday.
BLOOMBERG Volunteers deliver the body of a Covid-19 victim to a crematoriu­m in Setia Alam, Malaysia on Tuesday.

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