The World Health Organization said yesterday that the Indian variant of Covid-19, which has contributed to a surge in cases of coronavirus in the Asian country, it has been found in at least 12 other countries, but has been detected in over 1,200 sequences uploaded to the GISAID open access database “from at least 17 countries”. “Most of the sequences were uploaded from India, the UK, the US and Singapore,” WHO said in its weekly epidemiological update on the pandemic. The UN agency WHO recently pointed to B.1.617 – which has several subspecies with slightly different mutations and characteristics – as a “variant of interest” but not so far of concern. This second classification would indicate it as more dangerous than the original version of the virus, for example being more transmissible, deadly or able to evade vaccine protections.
India, new cases and deaths on the rise from covid
India is facing new cases and rising deaths in the pandemic, and fears are growing that the variant could contribute to the ongoing catastrophe. Only yesterday 350,000 new cases were registered in the country. WHO acknowledged that its preliminary model based on sequences submitted to GISAID indicates “that B.1.617 has a higher growth rate than other variants circulating in India, suggesting a potential increase in transmissibility”. He stressed that other variants circulating at the same time also showed greater transmissibility and that the combination “could play a role” in the current increase in the country. “In fact, the studies have shown that the spread of the second wave was much faster than the first”, said the WHO, noting however that “other drivers” could contribute to the increase, including non-compliance. very convinced of the people to public health measures and mass gatherings. Further investigations are needed to understand how much these factors affect “, says the UN agency, underlining that” further in-depth studies “on the characteristics of B.1.617 and other variants, including the impacts on transmissibility, severity and risk reinfection, are “urgently needed”.
Covid: Pakistan; dead record, 201 in 24 hours
New casualty record for Covid in Pakistan where 201 deaths have been recorded in the last 24 hours, bringing the total toll to 17,530. The previous record was 157 victims, recorded on 24 April. According to data released by the Ministry of Health, there are 5,292 new coronavirus cases in the country. At least 5,214 people are hospitalized in intensive care.
Covid: Brazil, an inquiry commission is born; Bolsonaro takes a risk
The Brazilian Senate has set up a commission of inquiry into the government’s handling of the pandemic, a move that could put President Jair Bolsonaro in trouble regarding his intention to run again in next year’s presidential election. Bolsonaro has in fact minimized the danger of the Covid-19 declaring himself opposed to the use of the mask, to lockdowns and also to vaccines. The government has been accused of having rejected several offers of vaccines, in particular an offer of 70 million doses of Pfizer serum in August 2020. The vaccination campaign is slow due to a shortage of doses and Bolsonaro continues to praise drugs. such as hydroxychloroquine which experts believe to be ineffective. The country is approaching the threshold of 400,000 deaths: only the US has registered more. The commission of inquiry is made up of 11 members and only 4 support the government. His goal is to understand if there has been negligence, if not corruption, especially in the management of the crisis in Manaus, in the north of the country, in the heart of the Amazon rainforest. “I didn’t make any mistakes,” Bolsonaro has already said.
Covid: in the US already 32.2 million cases and 573 thousand deaths
The United States yesterday reached 32,172,770 confirmed cases of the SARS-CoV2 coronavirus and 573,349 deaths from the disease. The data comes from Johns Hopkins University. Yesterday 724 more deaths were recorded than on Monday and 53,022 new infections. California is now the state most affected by the pandemic with 61,522 deaths, followed by New York (52,117), Texas (50,027), Florida (34,958), Pennsylvania (26,048), New Jersey (25,460) and Illinois (24,174). Other states with large numbers of deaths are Georgia (20,027), Ohio (19,188), Michigan (18,563), Massachusetts (17,566) or Arizona (17,276). In terms of infections, California has 3,735,494 cases, followed by Texas with 2,882,423, the third is Florida with 2,217,368 and New York is fourth with 2,037,414. The provisional death toll – 573,349 – far exceeds the lower limit of the White House’s initial estimates, which at best predicted between 100,000 and 240,000 deaths from the pandemic. The new president of the United States, Joe Biden, has predicted that in total more than 600,000 people in the country will die from the virus. For its part, the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluations (IHME) of the University of Washington, whose models for predicting the evolution of the pandemic are often cited by the White House, estimates that by August 1, 610,000 people will have died. . As for vaccines, about 141.7 million people (42.7% of the population) in the US have received at least one dose, of which 96.7 million (29.1%) are already fully vaccinated, according to data from the Centers. for Disease Control and Prevention.
.