Health News
Reuters Staff
LONDON (Reuters) – Daily coronavirus infections have been falling around the world for a month, reaching the lowest level since mid-October on Tuesday, Reuters figures show, but health experts have warned against apathy, even though vaccines are being rolled out worldwide.
Falling into infections and deaths coincides with deadlocks and serious curbs on rallies and movement, as governments weigh the need to stop successive waves of the pandemic, with the need to get people back to work and children back to school.
However, optimism about the way out of the crisis has been tempered by new variants of the virus, raising fears about the effectiveness of vaccines.
“This is not the time to let go of your disappointment,” said Maria Van Kerkhove, the World Health Organization’s technical guide at COVID-19, in Geneva.
“… We can not end up in a situation where things come up again.”
COVID-19 has hit some countries much harder than others, although differences in the way infections are counted make it impossible to make a perfect apple-to-apple comparison.
On Tuesday, 351,335 new infections were reported worldwide on an average of seven days, the figure fell from 863,737 on January 7th. There were 17,649 deaths on January 26 and dropped to 10,957 on February 16th.
COVID-19 infections are declining in the United States, with an average of 77,883 new infections per day. This is 31% of the peak – the highest daily average reported on January 8.
Since the onset of the pandemic, 27,902,387 infections and 490,795 coronavirus-related deaths have been reported, the highest in the world.
So far, 85 countries have started vaccinating people against the coronavirus and according to Reuters figures, they have administered at least 187,892,000 doses.
Gibraltar, a British overseas territory in the southern tip of Spain, is the leader in the world and has administered sufficient doses of vaccines to 40% of the population, assuming that each person needs two doses.
((Interactive graphical detection of global spread of coronavirus: open tmsnrt.rs/2FThSv7 in an external browser))