Global cases falling, but virus resurges in some countries

After a record-breaking tear, global coronavirus cases and deaths are falling as the virus recedes in the West. But world leaders and experts warn that the world is rapidly dividing: Wealthy nations well stocked with COVID vaccines are gaining control of the virus while it continues to run rampant in other parts of the world, pummeling India and flaring in Southeast Asian countries that had been fending it off.

New global cases are leveling off after rising steadily since March and peaking in late April, but the world is in danger as long as they remain at “an unacceptably high plateau,” the director general of the World Health Organization, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, said.

In Southeast Asia, Tedros noted that “cases and deaths are still increasing rapidly.” Cambodia and Thailand, which had controlled the virus throughout 2020, have recorded sharp increases in infections in recent days. Malaysia went back into lockdown Monday, two days after recording its highest daily case total since January.

Scientists warn that if the virus is allowed to spread unchecked in parts of the world with lower vaccine coverage, dangerous variants will continue to evolve, threatening all countries.

“Globally, we are still in a perilous situation,” Tedros said. About 783,000 new cases are reported on average each day globally, nearly half in India, where a virus variant, B.1.617, has been spreading.

The WHO deemed B.1.617 “a variant of concern” on Monday. Other variants of concern include B.1.1.7, first identified in Britain and now dominant in the United States, and P.1, originally detected in Brazil.

Less than 10% of India’s vast population is even partly vaccinated, offering little check to its onslaught of infections. In Africa, the figure is slightly more than 1%.

That “shocking global disparity,” Tedros said, “remains one of the biggest risks to ending the pandemic.”