Healthcare workers help a person on a stretcher outside an ambulance outside San Jose Hospital in Santiago on April 9, 2021. Chile reported a record 9,171 new coronavirus infections on Friday, the highest daily figure in a year of the pandemic, which is recorded in parallel with the rapid vaccination process that places the country as the third in the world.
JAVIER TORRES | AFP | Getty Images
The global death toll from the coronavirus reached more than 3 million people on Saturday amid repeated failures in the global vaccination campaign and a growing crisis in places such as Brazil, India and France.
The number of lives lost, as compiled by Johns Hopkins University, is approximately equal to the population of Kiev, Ukraine; Caracas, Venezuela; or metropolitan Lisbon, Portugal. It is larger than Chicago (2.7 million) and is equivalent to Philadelphia and Dallas combined.
And the real number is believed to be significantly higher due to a possible government cover-up and the many cases overlooked in the early stages of the outbreak that began in Wuhan, China, in late 2019.
When the world in January crossed the grim threshold of 2 million deaths, immunization skills had only just begun in Europe and the United States. Today, they are ongoing in more than 190 countries, although progress in bringing the virus under control varies widely.
As campaigns in the US and the UK have taken off, and people and businesses are beginning to contemplate life after the pandemic, other places, mostly poorer countries, but also some richer ones, lag behind in terms of shooting and have imposed new blockages and other restrictions as virus cases increase.
Passengers in protective suits against the spread of the new coronavirus disease line up at the counters at Santiago’s Arturo Merino Benitez International Airport on April 1, 2021, after Chile announced it would close its borders in April starting Monday, amid rising of COVID-19 cases.
MARTIN BERNETTI | AFP | Getty Images
Worldwide, deaths are rising again, at around 12,000 a day, on average, and new cases are rising, eclipsing 700,000 a day.
“This is not the situation we want to be in a pandemic in 16 months, in which we have proven control measures,” said Maria Van Kerkhove, one of the leaders of the World Health Organization at COVID-19.
In Brazil, where deaths number about 3,000 a day, accounting for a quarter of the lives lost worldwide in recent weeks, the crisis has been likened to a “furious hell” by a WHO official. A more contagious variant of the virus has been raging across the country.
As cases increase, hospitals run out of critical sedatives. As a result, there have been reports of some doctors diluting what supplies remain and even tying patients to their beds while the breathing tubes are pushed down their throats.
The slow release of the vaccine has shattered the pride of Brazilians in their own history of conducting huge immune campaigns that have been the envy of the developing world.
Taking instructions from President Jair Bolsonaro, who likened the virus to little more than a flu, the Ministry of Health bet for months on a single vaccine, ignoring other manufacturers. When the blockages appeared, it was too late to get large amounts in time.
Seeing so many patients suffering and dying alone at her hospital in Rio de Janeiro, she determined nurse Lidiane Melo to take desperate action.
In the early days of the pandemic, while patients were asking for comfort because it was too busy to offer, Melo filled two rubber gloves with warm water, closed them in knots, and stuck them around a patient’s hand to simulate a loving touch.
Some have dubbed this practice “God’s hand,” and it is now the heartbreaking image of a nation stolen by a medical emergency for no purpose.
“Patients can’t get visitors. Unfortunately, there’s no way. So it’s a way to provide psychological support, to be there with the patient holding their hand,” Melo said. She added: “And this year is worse, the severity of patients is 1,000 times higher.”
This situation is just as serious in India, where cases have risen in February after weeks of steady decline, taking authorities by surprise. In an increase caused by variants of the virus, India has registered over 180,000 new infections in a 24-hour period in the last week, bringing the total number of cases to over 13.9 million.
The problems that India overcame last year are the harassment of health officials. Only 178 fans were free on Wednesday afternoon in New Delhi, a city of 29 million people, where 13,000 new infections were reported the day before.
The challenges facing India have repercussions beyond its borders, as the country is the largest provider of fire to COVAX, the UN-sponsored program for distributing vaccines to the world’s poorest parts. Last month, India said it would suspend vaccine exports until the virus spreads in the country.
The WHO recently described the supply situation as precarious. Up to 60 countries may not receive photos by June, according to an estimate. To date, COVAX has administered approximately 40 million doses in over 100 countries, enough to cover only 0.25% of the world’s population.
Globally, about 87% of the 700 million doses delivered were distributed in rich countries. While 1 in 4 people in rich countries have received a vaccine, in poor countries the figure is 1 in over 500.
In recent days, the United States and some European countries have suspended the use of Johnson & Johnson’s COVID-19 vaccine, while authorities are investigating extremely rare but dangerous blood clots. The AstraZeneca vaccine has also been hit by delays and restrictions due to a fear of clotting.
Another concern: poorer countries rely on vaccines produced by China and Russia, which some scientists believe offer less protection than Pfizer, Moderna and AstraZeneca.
Last week, the director of the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention acknowledged that vaccines in the country offer low protection and said officials are considering mixing them with other photos to improve their effectiveness.
In the United States, where more than 560,000 lives have been lost, accounting for more than 1 in 6 COVID-19 deaths, hospitalizations and deaths have dropped, business is reopening and life is beginning to return to normal. many states. The number of Americans applying for unemployment benefits fell to 576,000 last week, a low post-COVID-19 level.
But progress has been uneven, and new hotspots – especially Michigan – have caught fire in recent weeks. However, deaths in the US fell to about 700 a day on average, falling from a mid-January peak of about 3,400.
In Europe, countries feel the weight of a more contagious variant that has devastated Britain and pushed the death toll of the COVID-19 continent beyond 1 million.
Nearly 6,000 seriously ill patients are being treated in French critical care units, figures unseen since the first wave a year ago.
Dr. Marc Leone, head of intensive care at the Northern Hospital in Marseille, said exhausted staff, exhausted as heroes at the start of the pandemic, now feel lonely and cling to hope that renewed school closures and other restrictions will help reduction of the virus in the coming weeks.
“There is exhaustion, more bad temper. You have to tread carefully because there are a lot of conflicts,” he said. “We will give everything we have to go through these 15 days as best we can.”