“WHO sounds alarm as global deaths top 4 million, delta spreads to 100 countries”, The Washington Post

Published July 8, 2021

By Erin Cunningham, July 8, 2021

World Health Organization officials issued stern warnings to nations planning to relax coronavirus restrictions as global deaths from the virus topped 4 million and the more virulent delta variant was spotted in more than 100 countries, including those with high vaccination rates.

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A woman in Gauhati, India, breaks down as she prays before the cremation of a relative who died of covid-19. (Anupam Nath/AP)

Speaking at a briefing Wednesday, the officials cautioned that more contagious variants were “currently winning the race against vaccines,” as most of the world’s population has yet to be immunized.

Even the delta variant, which was first identified in India and is now tearing through unvaccinated populations around the world, “is itself mutating and will continue to do so,” said Maria Van Kerkhove, technical lead at the WHO’s Health Emergencies Program.

“There are more than two dozen countries that have epidemic curves that are almost vertical right now,” she said. “We’re not in a good place.”

Here are some significant developments:

  • Japan declared a state of emergency in Tokyo that will run throughout the Olympic Games, to combat rising infections in the capital and the spread of the contagious delta variant.
  • Health authorities in Australia’s New South Wales on Thursday reported the state’s largest daily increase in local coronavirus cases this year. The delta variant has driven a surge of cases in the state capital, Sydney, which remains shut down until July 16.
  • The delta variant is now dominant in the United States, according to new estimates from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Over the two weeks ending July 3, more than 51 percent of new cases were linked to the variant, the agency said.
  • England’s coronavirus infections have quadrupled since early June, according to a new study by Imperial College London, as the delta variant gains ground among mostly unvaccinated populations. Despite the surge, British Prime Minister Boris Johnson plans to lift nearly all coronavirus-related restrictions later this month.

At the same time, “some countries with high vaccination coverage are … relaxing as though the pandemic is already over,” said WHO Director General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus. “The world is at a perilous point in this pandemic … far too many countries in every region in the world are seeing sharp spikes in cases and hospitalization.”

His remarks came as several nations, particularly in Europe, were set to fully reopen or had already lifted some virus curbs, even as the delta variant was gaining ground.

In Spain, authorities in some regions reimposed restrictions on nightlife this week amid a surge in infections among younger people who have not yet been vaccinated. A French minister on Thursday advised residents to refrain from traveling to Spain and Portugal, where the delta variant is prevalent.

In England, where at least 95 percent of new cases are caused by the delta variant, Johnson announced plans to relax nearly all coronavirus-related restrictions later this month. The move to reopen could lead to a daily case rate of 100,000 this summer, Britain’s health secretary said earlier this week. But officials there say that widespread vaccinations will help keep hospitalizations and deaths down.

“It’s been good to see the drop-off in hospitalizations and deaths in many countries that are achieving high vaccination levels,” Mike Ryan, executive director of the WHO’s Health Emergencies Program, said at the briefing.

He also pointed to a 33 percent increase last week in new cases in the 53 countries that make up the WHO’s European region.

“I think that it’s also a moment for extreme caution for countries right now,” he said. “So the idea that everyone is protected and it’s Kumbaya and everything goes back to normal — I think that is a very dangerous assumption anywhere in the world. And it’s still a dangerous assumption in the European environment.”

According to the WHO and data compiled by Johns Hopkins University, the pandemic’s official global death toll surpassed 4 million Wednesday, a figure Tedros said was probably an underestimate.

More than 605,000 of those deaths were recorded in the United States. But in recent months, less developed nations such as Brazil and India have contributed to a growing share of coronavirus deaths, as outbreaks in both countries ran rampant through unvaccinated populations.

Covid-19 has killed about 530,000 people in Brazil, while in India at least 404,000 fatalities have been blamed on the virus — figures experts think are vast undercounts.

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Erin Cunningham is an Istanbul-based correspondent for The Washington Post, covering conflict and political turmoil across the Middle East. She previously was a correspondent at the paper’s bureau in Cairo, and has reported on wars in Afghanistan, Gaza, Libya and Iraq.
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