Hospitals in Turkey and Poland are filling up. Pakistan restricts domestic travel. The United States government will send more aid to Michigan, the state with the highest increase in coronavirus infections in the country.
The global increase in COVID-19 cases and deaths also includes Thailand, which weathered the pandemic much better than other countries, but is now struggling to contain it.
The only exceptions to the situation are countries with advanced vaccination programs, mainly Israel and Great Britain. The United States is also seeing an increase in the number of new cases, despite being a world leader in vaccinations, and the White House said Friday it would send federal aid to Michigan to keep the state’s infection rate under control. worst in the country.
The World Health Organization indicated that infections are on the rise in all regions of the planet, driven by new variants of the virus and because in many countries populations have come out of labor prematurely.
“We’ve seen increases (in cases) around the world for six weeks. And now, unfortunately, we are seeing an increase in the number of deaths in the last three weeks, ”said Dr. Margaret Harris, a WHO spokeswoman, at a meeting with the press in Geneva.
In its weekly epidemiological update, the agency indicated that more than 4 million cases of COVID-19 have been reported in the past week. The death rate was 11% higher than the week before, with more than 71,000 people reported.
The increase in infections, hospitalizations and deaths has spread to countries where vaccination is finally gaining traction. That makes the outlook even worse for much of the world, where large-scale vaccination programs remain a distant reality.
One of the most affected countries is Turkey, where most of the new coronavirus cases are related to a variant first discovered in Britain.
Ismail Cinel, director of the Turkish Intensive Care Association, said the increase in cases is beginning to put pressure on the country’s relatively sophisticated health care system, and “alarms are going off” for intensive care units, which are still not saturated. to be.
“The mutated form of the virus causes more organ damage,” said Cinel. “In the past, 2 out of 10 patients died; now the number is 4 out of 10. And if we continue like this, we lose 6 ″.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan relaxed restrictions on COVID-19 in March to lessen the damage to the country’s economy. But the new resurgence forced him to announce new restrictions, such as weekend lockdowns and the closure of cafes and restaurants during Ramadan, the Muslim holy month, which begins April 13.
In the US capital, President Joe Biden’s administration outlined how the federal government plans to help Michigan better manage vaccines already assigned to the state and expand its diagnostic testing capacity and drug availability. Support no longer includes vaccinations.
Brazil, for its part, has the second highest death toll in the world, surpassed only by the United States. In Sao Paulo they have had to perform night funerals to keep up with demand, and school buses have been used to transport coffins. Vaccination coverage is slowly progressing – less than 3% of the 210 million Brazilians have received the two doses, according to the Our World in Data research portal – and some state governors have expressed concerns about the stocks.
Pakistan is in the midst of a third wave of infections and rulers will restrict transport in cities on weekends starting at midnight on Friday.
In Thailand, authorities have imposed new restrictions to try to contain the infections.
Poland has seen a dramatic increase in deaths and hospitals have been forced to send away patients with cancer and other illnesses as intensive care units and other areas are full of COVID-19 patients. Hospital admissions for coronavirus are up 20% in the past two weeks.