Worldwide deaths related to Covid-19 surpassed 5 million on Friday, 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 US, Russia, Brazil, Mexico and India.
While it took just over a year for the 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.
Worldwide deaths related to Covid-19 surpassed 5 million on Friday, 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. Pictured: A hospital in Gaza
People visit Suzanne Brennan Firstenberg’s ‘In America: Remember,’ a memorial for Americans who died due to the coronavirus disease yesterday
An average of 8,000 deaths were reported daily across the world over the last week, or around five deaths every minute. But the 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 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.
An average of 8,000 deaths were reported daily across the world over the last week, or around five deaths every minute. But the rate has been slowing in recent weeks. Pictured: Mourners recite a prayer near the corpse of a Syrian who died of coronavirus during a funeral in the village of Barisha in the Idlib province this week
Emergency personnel remove a victim on a stretcher after a fire in the Covid-19 ICU section of the Hospital for Infectious Diseases in the Black Sea port of Constanta, Romania yesterday
‘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 US, 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 hospitalizations 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 per cent 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 per cent of all reported deaths, followed by North America and Eastern Europe contributing more than 14 per cent 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 per cent 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 World Health Organization member countries.
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