The Covid-19 pandemic has killed at least 4,439,888 people worldwide since the end of December 2019, according to a report released Tuesday by the AFP from official sources. The United States is the most affected country with 629,891 deaths, ahead of Brazil (575,742 deaths), India (435,110), Mexico (253,526) and Peru (197,921). The WHO estimates, taking into account the excess mortality directly and indirectly linked to Covid-19, that the toll of the pandemic could be two to three times higher than that calculated by official data.
The Chinese National Health Commission has announced that it has detected 20 new coronavirus positives, of which 4 are locally infected.
The four local cases are located in the municipality of Shanghai, and in the provinces of Jiangsu and Yunnan, the latter pockets of small outbreaks in the Asian country in recent weeks.
As for the remaining 16 cases, travelers from abroad were diagnosed in the municipalities of Shanghai and Tianjin and in the provinces of Yunnan, Canton, Jiangsu and Henan. Health authorities also reported today the detection of 11 new asymptomatic infections (all “imported”), although Beijing does not count them as confirmed cases unless they exhibit symptoms. Like this China reopens one of the main world ports, closed in early August after the emergence of a Covid-19 outbreak. It is the port of Ningbo-Zhoushan, located 250 km south of Shanghai.
The effectiveness of Pfizer and Moderna vaccines against Covid-19 infection has dropped from 91% to 66% since the Delta variant became dominant in the United States, according to data released Tuesday by US health authorities. This decline in efficacy against the Delta variant has been highlighted by several studies, even if the precise data differs from each other. This is one of the reasons given last week by health authorities to announce a recall campaign from mid-September, which will affect all American adults who received their second dose eight months earlier.
More than five billion doses of Covid vaccines were administered worldwide, according to a tally made by the AFP on Tuesday from official sources. “High-income” countries (so defined by the World Bank) administered an average of 111 doses per 100 inhabitants, “low-income” countries only 2.4. The slow deployment of the Covid-19 vaccination campaign could lead to a $ 2.3 trillion loss in global GDP over the next three years, a study calculated.
According to the research center The Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU) author of the study, “countries that by mid-2022 will have vaccinated less than 60% of their population will record a total loss of GDP of 2.3 trillion dollars in the period 2022-2025”, which is a large sum way to the annual GDP of a country like France.
The World Health Organization (WHO) deplored the “shocking disparities in access to vaccines“, at the opening of an annual virtual meeting of the ministers of health of the African continent. The governor of the State of Oregon, faced with an explosion of contamination due to the Delta variant, announced on Tuesday that it had restored the obligation to wear the outdoor mask when physical distancing is not possible, even for subjects vaccinated against Covid-19.
English clubs they decided on Tuesday not to let some of their foreign players play the international matches in September in countries with a high risk of contamination from Covid, to avoid the ten-day quarantine imposed on their return by the British government.
The main arms lobby of America, the National Rifle Association (NRA), announced Tuesday that it was canceling its main annual convention on concerns over the spread of Covid-19.
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