Wealthy countries accounting for only 15% of the global population had 80% of the Covid deaths, says an article published in The Guardian
Rising cases
Some were warning that the worst was yet to come, once the disease took hold in poorer countries.
World Bank analysts Philip Schellekens and Diego Sourrouille predicted a massive shift in disease burden to the developing world. Just in terms of demography, you’d expect those countries to account for around 70% of deaths. As things stand they account for a little over half of it, which is probably an underestimate due to variations in data quality and the pandemic is far from over..
Death and Infection rates surge
More than 5.8 million new cases of Covid were listed globally. More than 3 million people have now died from Covid, according to the World Health Organization (WHO), which also reports that infections and hospitalisations in those aged 25 to 59 are increasing at an alarming rate.
WHO director general, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said, “It took nine months to reach 1 million deaths, four months to reach 2 million, and three months to reach 3 million.”
The sharpest upticks in recent weeks have been seen in south-east Asia driven in large part by India and the eastern Mediterranean and western Pacific regions, but the situation is also very bad in Latin America. People who migrated to Brazil in search of work are now reported to be fleeing the humanitarian catastrophe that is unfolding there.
Infection rates are still high in many wealthy countries including the US and much of Europe but the mood is more upbeat: as vaccines roll out, many people feel the worst is behind them. Some US states have rashly lifted their mask mandates. The British government gave the most optimistic signal it could think of earlier this month, when it reopened pubs.
Covax facility
The Covax facility, which was designed to offset vaccine nationalism, aims to get a first vaccine dose to at least 20% of the population of each participating country by the end of 2021 though it now looks like it will fall short of that goal. Even if it hits its target, since less than a quarter of the global population is judged likely to have acquired immunity through natural infection to date, that will leave at least half of it susceptible to Covid in the short term.
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Source: TheGaurdian
