Cases, deaths rise in US, Brazil and Asian countries

After more than 664,500 Covid-19 infections and 12,407 deaths detected in the past 24 hours globally and in order to mitigate the expansion, Sri Lanka has announced tough restrictions and Thailand has warned it may tighten measures in force after reaching a daily record of contagions.

Health officials Sri Lanka has banned New Year festival activities scheduled to take place on April 14 and called for gatherings for rituals to be limited to immediate family members and close relatives, not to exceed 100 people.

Meanwhile, in Thailand, alarms were raised after the Ministry of Health confirmed this Sunday 967 cases of Covid-19, the highest number in a day and which is far from a re-epidemic that has erupted last March in Bangkok, after keeping the virus under control most of the year.

The deputy director general of the country’s disease control department, Dr Sophon Iamsirithaworn, has warned that if the number of cases continues to rise in two weeks, it will be necessary to implement measures beyond the current restrictions. on nightlife and current distancing rules.

Another concern for Thailand is the delay in vaccination against the coronavirus of its 69 million inhabitants, which according to deputy government spokesperson Traisuree Taisaranakul, 537,380 doses were applied in 77 provinces as of Friday.

In the midst of the fourth wave of infections and with 23 of 31 provinces reconfigured since last week, Iran has reported 258 deaths from the coronavirus in the past 24 hours, the highest number since the beginning of last December.

Iranian health ministry spokeswoman Sima Sadat Lari also reported 21,063 more cases the day before, bringing the total to more than 2 million, in addition to 64,490 deaths, according to the DPA news agency.

As, in Pakistan, the epidemiological curve of Covid-19 is increasing accelerated and is approaching the peak of last June, with over 5,000 infections on the last day, setting a weekly average of over 4,500 infections.

In order to control the increase in infections and deaths, which reached a daily record of 114, authorities decided to extend the ban on intercity passenger transport on weekends until mid-month.

Amid the rising trend in coronavirus infections, India has banned exports of remdesivir, a drug used in the treatment of patients infected with the virus, after detecting that the increase in cases caused a “sudden increase in demand” for the drug, the health ministry reported.

“It is possible that this demand will increase in the coming days,” said the ministry, quoted by the AFP news agency, after India counted 152,000 Covid-19 infections in the past 24 hours and reached more than 13.3 million cases and nearly 170,000 deaths since the start of the pandemic.

A similar scenario was anticipated in the United States by President Joe Biden’s senior medical consultant, virologist Anthony Fauci, who warned the country could face a “significant increase in peak infections” from Covid-19 in the next few days and despite the iron vaccination campaign.

“In some states, such as Michigan, New York and New Jersey, infections have started to rise again instead of leveling off, which is worrying,” said the specialist.

The country hardest hit by the pandemic racked up 81,376 infections and 904 deaths as of the day before, according to the latest update from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The same fate runs the second country most affected by the pandemic, Brasil, where according to statistics from the UCI project, the number of people under 40 with coronavirus who had to be admitted to intensive care last March exceeded that of older groups.

Specifically, the number of people aged 39 or younger hospitalized in an intensive care unit for Covid-19 increased significantly in March and passed the 11,000 mark, or 52.2% of the total, according to the UCI project.

At the start of the pandemic, this figure was only 14.6%, and between September and February – 45%, and experts attribute the reasons to the spread of the new Brazilian variant P1 or Manaus, to which the majority of patients over 80 years of age are vaccinated and the propensity of those under 40 is either because they leave their home to work, or because they think they are less vulnerable.