courtesy: npr.org
courtesy: thequint.com
On Thursday, the COVID-19 related deaths worldwide moved past 4 million, where many countries still struggle to procure enough vaccines for the inoculation of its population. Whereas the number of deaths and new cases of COVID-19 have decreased in US and Britain, many nations have shortages of vaccines as the Delta variant became the dominant strain all over the world.
The first five countries by their total number of deaths would rank US first, then Brazil, India, Russia and Mexico, which have represented over 50 per cent of deaths in the world.
The nine countries on the top reporting the most number of deaths per capita in the last week were all from Latin America, as they have faced their worst outbreak of the virus since March.
80 per cent of the ICU’s in Brazil’s Sao Paulo, were occupants suffering from COVID-19. The hospitals in Bolivia, Chile and Uruguay have largely seen the patients of COVID-19 in the age between 25 to 40. The rise in death rates have strained the operating capacity of the crematoriums in the developing nations and the gravediggers in several countries have been forced to expand the cemeteries.
According to a Reuters analysis, India and Brazil report most deaths each day on a seven-day average, and are still troubled with the cremation and lack of burial space. India is accountable for one in every three deaths reported worldwide, daily.
The health experts believe that the official death toll would be undercounted globally, WHO in the previous month estimated the fatalities to be much higher. In Bihar, India, the COVID-19 death toll rose sharply higher when the unreported cases were discovered, raising concerns that India’s overall death toll could be significantly higher than the official figure.
The wealthy countries have been urged to donate more as the poor nations struggle to vaccinate their population due to the vaccine shortage. The American Health Organisation director; Carissa Etienne, on Wednesday said that the issue in America was the access of vaccines and not the vaccine acceptance, as she urges the countries to send the vaccinations as soon as possible.
The rich nations of the Group Of Seven (G7) have pledged to provide with 1 billion COVID-19 vaccines to provide help to the poorer countries in vaccinating their population.