The number of confirmed coronavirus cases across the globe has passed 100million, just over a year since the bug began to rapidly spread.
An average of around 650,000 infections have been reported every day over the past week, as countries fight to contain a number of more transmissible variants of the disease.
In anticipation of global cases hitting today’s milestone, World Health Organization Director General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus tweeted: ‘This must strengthen our resolve to save lives – take care of ourselves & others.’
The USA has more confirmed cases than any other country, with 25.4million positive tests, according to the Johns Hopkins University’s Covid-19 tracker.
India follows with 10.7million cases, compared to 8.9million in Brazil, and around 3.7million in Russia and the UK.
Meanwhile global deaths now stand at around 2.15million, of which 423,010 were in the US – by far the worst hit nation.
In Brazil 217,664 people have lost their lives, compared to 153,587 in India, 150,273 in Mexico and 100,358 in the UK.
Britain became the first country in Europe to pass the 100,000 milestone today, with half of all officials deaths taking place since mid-November.
Describing how it was ‘hard to compute the sorrow’ contained in today’s death toll, Boris Johnson insisted that the Government has done ‘everything we could’ to prevent lost lives, despite a number of policy U-turns throughout the course of the pandemic.
More than 68millions shots of the coronavirus vaccine have now been given in 56 countries, averaging at 3.44million doses per day, according to Bloomberg.
While this suggests there is some light at the end of the tunnel, concerns over vaccine supply chains have been raised.
The European Union has threatened to impose strict controls on the export of Belgian made Pfizer jabs made in the bloc to other countries, including Britain.
It comes amid a row with Cambridge based pharmaceutical giant AstraZeneca over failing to deliver the promised doses of its vaccine, developed with Oxford University.
However the British Government says it is confident that any block wouldn’t get in the way of its target to have all adults vaccinated by autumn.
Source: Read Full Article