The United States on Thursday opened a greater distance between itself and much of the rest of the world, close to the 200th vaccine given in a few months’ race to protect the population against COVID-19, even if other countries , rich and poor, are battling infection rates and stubborn deaths.
Nearly half of American adults have received at least one dose of the vaccine, and about 30 percent of US adults have been completely vaccinated, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. But the picture is still relentless in parts of Europe, Latin America, Africa and Asia, as virus variants are fueling an increase in new cases, and the total death toll is closing at 3 million.
France suffered 100,000 virus deaths on Thursday, becoming only the eighth country to do so.
India’s two largest cities, New Delhi and Mumbai, have imposed business closures and strict traffic restrictions as more than 200,000 new infections have passed. Some hotels and banquet halls have been ordered to convert their space into wards to treat patients with the virus, and the rise has forced India – a major vaccine manufacturer – to delay dose exports to other countries.
Japan also experienced a rapid recurrence of infections just three months before the Olympics were hosted. The country’s western metropolis, Osaka, reported more than 1,200 new infections on Thursday, the largest since the pandemic began. A senior ruling party official suggested canceling the games if infections made it impossible.
Disturbing signs have also emerged in the United States, despite the good news that more than 194 million coronavirus outbreaks have been administered nationwide. The seven-day average of daily hits reached 2.9 million last week.
New daily infections in the US have increased by 11% in the last two weeks. Many US states have lifted restrictions on businesses and public assemblies. But more patients are hospitalized in some states, including Michigan, which is leading the nation with nearly 8,000 new infections a day.
In suburban Detroit, Dr. Nick Gilpin of Beaumont Health compared the increase in the number of coronavirus patients to a “runaway train.” Staff used tents to cope with the influx of people seeking emergency care from Michigan’s largest hospital system, which on Thursday treated more than 800 patients for COVID-19. That has risen from about 500 two weeks ago.
“Our COVID-19 number is growing faster and it is very worrying and alarming to see this,” said John Fox, executive director of Beaumont Health, which operates eight hospitals.
State-level coronavirus patients were close to a record number in Michigan, which had 3,960 people with confirmed infections hospitalized Wednesday.
Even though half of American adults are still completely unvaccinated, the declining demand for coronavirus vaccines has been reported by some hospitals in Alabama and Missouri. Both states are already delaying the nation in general in vaccinating their populations.
In Alabama, only 37% of adults received even a single dose of vaccine. However, Cullman Regional Medical Center, north of Birmingham, cited declining appointments in a statement announcing that its vaccine clinic had been moved to an emergency care center. East Alabama Medical Center near Auburn University says it is preparing to drop its vaccination program in a county where less than 18 percent are fully vaccinated.
“The number of vaccine applications has reached a plateau,” hospital spokesman John Atkinson said in a statement.
Missouri health officials say they are also worried that there are not enough people looking for shots. A large federally administered vaccination site in downtown St. Louis. Louis manages less than half of its capacity of 3,000 photos a day. In St. Joseph, Missouri, vaccine appointments have slowed, said Dr. David Turner, primary care physician for Mosaic Life Care.
“As a medical professional, I’m worried,” Turner told St. Louis. Joseph News-Press. “We would like to see more people vaccinated. Even if they had COVID, we still recommend vaccination. ”
In other developments, the US government reported on Thursday that some vaccinated people, as expected, became ill with coronavirus, although such cases are rare. The CDC said about 5,800 of the “discovered” infections had been confirmed. This is about 75 million Americans who have been completely vaccinated, but the agency has warned that the reporting of such cases is uneven and incomplete.
Serious disease among vaccinated Americans is even rarer, with fewer than 400 hospitalized and 74 dead. As with the flu, people who receive COVID-19 after vaccination are more likely to have a milder disease than unvaccinated people, the CDC said.
More than a third of the world’s deaths have occurred in three countries – the United States, Mexico and Brazil, where a total of more than 1.1 million have died. The virus takes about 12,000 lives every day.
The recent decision to suspend the use of the Johnson & Johnson vaccine due to preliminary reports of rare blood clots has left South Africa unscathed in its fight against an aggressive variant of coronavirus. South Africa has more than 1.5 million confirmed cases of COVID-19, including at least 53,000 deaths, accounting for more than 30% of all confirmed cases in the 54 African countries.
Meanwhile, the German Ministry of Health announced that the country administered a national record of more than 738,000 vaccines on Wednesday, although authorities warned that hospitals were seeing a dramatic increase in coronavirus patients.
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Bynum reported from Savannah, Georgia. Associated Press writers Ed White of Detroit, Jay Reeves of Birmingham, Alabama, Mike Stobbe of New York and Heather Hollingsworth of Mission, Kansas, contributed to the report.