Towards the end of pandemic, more people have been vaccinated so far than total cases: data

(Reuters) – More people are now being vaccinated against COVID-19 than have been infected by the virus that has spread around the world over the past year. It is a milestone on the way to ending the pandemic, based on data reported on Wednesday.

Despite the important data, it remains unclear how long it will take to vaccinate the world. Many of those vaccinated received only one of the two required doses.

A total of 104.9 million doses of vaccines were administered according to the University of Oxford-based Our World in Data here and the latest data Wednesday from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention here. The total vaccinated now exceeds the 104.1 million COVID-19 cases of infection in a global Reuters tracker.

According to the Reuters tracker, COVID-19 infections are still on the rise in 44 countries, and the virus has killed at least 2.26 million people worldwide. Health experts are vaccinating as much as possible in the light of new infectious variants.

Duke University’s Global Health Innovation Center here confirms the 7.7 billion dose global purchases with another 5 billion doses under discussion or reserved as optional extensions of existing transactions.

Israel is the world leader, with enough vaccine doses for 28% of its population, assuming each person needs two doses, according to Our World in Data.

The director general of the World Health Organization, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, on Tuesday called for greater cooperation between countries to achieve global vaccination on the scale needed to end the pandemic.

“Despite the growing number of vaccination options, current manufacturing capacity meets only a fraction of global demand,” he wrote in the journal Foreign Policy.

“Allowing the majority of the world’s population to be vaccinated will not only perpetuate unnecessary diseases and deaths and the pain of constant exclusion, but also produce new virus mutations as COVID-19 continues to spread among unprotected populations,” he writes he bit.ly/ 3oGW3Qd.

Rich countries vying for COVID-19 vaccine supplies should take into account the situation in poorer parts of the world, the WHO said last week, warning that the storage of shots is keeping the pandemic on fire.

GRAPHIC-COVID-19 Global Tracker: here