According to a Reuters tally, deaths from the coronavirus are on the rise again worldwide, especially in Brazil and India. Health officials are blaming the upswing in cases on more infectious variants first identified in the UK, South Africa, and Brazil.
Based on the Reuters tally, it took over a year for the world to reach a coronavirus death toll of 2 million – yet the next million deaths were added in just three months.
Brazil is leading the world in the number of new deaths per day, accounting for one in every four deaths worldwide each day, according to a Reuters analysis, reports WHBL.com.
Brazil's COVID-19 death surge set to pass the worst of record U.S. wave pic.twitter.com/71mfxng4lC
— Reuters (@Reuters) April 6, 2021
World Health Organization (WHO) epidemiologist Maria Van Kerkhove, citing the dire situation in Brazil right now, said in a briefing last Thursday: “Indeed there is a very serious situation going on in Brazil right now, where we have a number of states in critical condition,” adding that many ICUs are already at 90 percent capacity.
India reported a record rise in COVID-19 infections on Monday, becoming the second nation after the United States to post more than 100,000 new cases in a day. Maharashtra, India’s worst affected state, began shutting shopping malls, cinemas, bars, restaurants, and places of worship on Monday as hospitals became overrun with patients.
India health official says next four weeks 'very, very critical' in COVID-19 battle pic.twitter.com/VPgK3pPY3W
— Reuters (@Reuters) April 6, 2021
The European region, which includes 51 countries, has the highest total number of deaths at nearly 1.1 million. The United Kingdom, Russia, France, Italy, and Germany, together, account for 60 percent of Europe’s total coronavirus-related deaths.
In Russia, according to data published by Rosstat, the nation’s statistics agency, the coronavirus death toll has surpassed 225,000. The figures cover a period from April 2020 through February 2021. This puts Russia third globally for the most coronavirus-related deaths after the United States and Brazil, which have reported 553,000 and 325,000 fatalities, respectively, from the disease, according to Johns Hopkins University data.
Radio Free Europe is reporting that the Rosstat death toll is more than double the widely reported fatality figure provided by the Russian government’s coronavirus task force and the one which is used by John Hopkins. That figure is 99,000 deaths, with 4,538,101 confirmed cases.
The United States has the highest number of deaths of any country in the world at 555,735 and accounts for about 19 percent of all deaths due to COVID-19 in the world.
Globally, 370.3 million people, or not quite 5 percent of the global population have received a single dose of COVID-19 vaccine by Sunday, according to the latest figures from research and data provider firm Our World in Data.
Yet, it goes without saying that the World Health Organization is urging countries to donate more doses of approved COVID-19 vaccines to help meet vaccination targets for the most vulnerable in poorer countries.
