Global COVID-19 cases surpass 200 million as Delta variant spreads

Aug 4 (Reuters) – Global coronavirus cases topped 200 million on Wednesday, according to a Reuters tally, as the most infectious Delta variant threatens areas with low vaccination rates and strains health systems .

The global increase in cases highlights the growing gap in vaccination rates between rich and poor countries. Cases are increasing in about a third of the world’s countries, many of which have not even given a first dose to half of their population.

The World Health Organization (WHO) on Wednesday called for a moratorium on COVID-19 vaccine recalls until at least 10% of each country’s population is vaccinated.

“We need an urgent reversal, the majority of vaccines intended for high-income countries, the majority intended for low-income countries,” WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said.

The Delta variant upsets all assumptions about the virus and struggling economies, with disease experts scrambling to determine whether the latest version of the coronavirus is making people, especially unvaccinated people, sicker than before.

At least 2.6% of the world’s population has been infected since the start of the pandemic, with the actual figure likely being higher due to the limited number of tests in many places. If the number of people infected were a country, it would be the eighth most populous in the world, behind Nigeria, according to a Reuters analysis.

It took more than a year for COVID-19 cases to hit the 100 million mark, while the next 100 million were reported in just over six months, according to the analysis. The pandemic has killed nearly 4.4 million people.

The countries reporting the most cases over an average of seven days – the United States, Brazil, Indonesia, India and Iran – account for about 38% of all global cases reported each day.

The United States accounts for one in seven infections reported worldwide. U.S. states with low vaccination rates such as Florida and Louisiana are seeing record numbers of hospitalized COVID patients, although the nation has given 70% of adults at least one shot of the vaccine. The head of a Louisiana hospital warned of the “darkest days” to date.

Unvaccinated people account for nearly 97% of severe cases, according to the White House COVID-19 response team.

INCREASING CASES IN ASIA

Southeast Asian countries are also reporting an increase in cases. With just 8% of the world’s population, the region reports nearly 15% of all cases worldwide every day, according to a Reuters analysis.

Indonesia, which faced an exponential increase in COVID-19 cases in July, reported the highest number of deaths on average and topped 100,000 total deaths on Wednesday. The country is responsible for one in five deaths reported worldwide every day. The Southeast Asian nation aims to gradually reopen its economy in September, Health Minister Budi Gunadi Sadikin said on Monday, citing that the wave of infections had passed its peak, with daily confirmed cases declining.

After suffering its worst outbreak in April-May, India is once again experiencing an upward trend in cases. As of Friday, the country reported 44,230 new cases of COVID-19, the most in three weeks, fueling concerns of a third wave of infections that has forced a state to shut down.

The Chinese city of Wuhan, where the virus first appeared in late 2019, will test its 12 million residents for the coronavirus after confirming its first domestic cases of the Delta variant. The city had not reported any local cases since mid-May last year.

The variant, first detected in India, is as contagious as chickenpox and spreads much more easily than a cold or the flu, the CDC said in an internal document.

A key problem, said Dr Gregory Poland, vaccine researcher at the Mayo Clinic, is that current vaccines block disease, but they don’t block infection by preventing the virus from replicating in the nose.

As a result, he said, “the vaccines we currently have will not be the ultimate solution,” he said. “We’re now in a scenario of our own making, where it’s going to take years or even decades to win.… And we’re going to chase our tail with variants until we get some kind of vaccine that delivers infection. and disease blocking abilities. “

Reporting by Roshan Abraham and Kavya B in Bengaluru; Additional reporting by Julie Steenhuysen in Chicago; Editing by Lisa Shumaker

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