The United States on Thursday opened up more distance between itself and much of the rest of the world, close to the 200 millionth vaccine administered in a month-long race to protect the population from COVID-19, even while other countries , rich and poor, struggling. with persistent high infection rates and deaths.
Nearly half of American adults have received at least one dose of the vaccine, and according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, about 30% of adults in the U.S. are fully vaccinated. But the picture is still relentlessly grim in parts of Europe, Latin America, Africa and Asia, as variants of the virus fuel an increase in new cases, with the worldwide death toll closing at 3 million.
France passed 100,000 virus deaths on Thursday, becomes only the eighth country to do so.
India’s two largest cities, New Delhi and Mumbai, have imposed business closures and strict restrictions on movement, as new infections have hit more than 200,000. Some hotels and banquet halls have been ordered to convert their space into rooms for the treatment of virus patients, and the boom has forced India – a major vaccine producer – to delay the export of doses to other countries.
Japan also quickly got infections again, just three months before the Olympics were to be hosted. The country’s western metropolis Osaka reported more than 1,200 new infections on Thursday, the highest since the pandemic began. A party ruling party official has suggested the possibility of canceling the games if the infections make it impossible.
Disturbing signs have also appeared in the US, despite the good news that more than 194 million coronavirus shots have been fired nationwide. The average of seven days given daily shots reached 2.9 million last week.
New daily infections in the US have increased by 11% over the past two weeks. Many U.S. states have lifted restrictions on businesses and public gatherings. But more sick people are being admitted to hospitals in some states, including Michigan, which is leading the country with nearly 8,000 new infections a day.
In suburban Detroit, Dr. Nick Gilpin of Beaumont Health compares an increasing pressure of coronavirus patients to a ‘runaway train’. Staff used tents to handle the influx of people seeking emergency care into Michigan’s largest hospital system, which treated more than 800 patients for COVID-19 on Thursday. It has risen from about 500 two weeks ago.
“Our COVID-19 numbers are climbing higher and faster, and it’s very disturbing to see that,” said John Fox, CEO of Beaumont Health, which operates eight hospitals.
Coronavirus patients around the world were near record numbers in Michigan, which hospitalized 3,960 people with confirmed infections Wednesday.
Although half of American adults are still completely unvaccinated, a dwindling demand for coronavirus shots has been reported by some hospitals in Alabama and Missouri. Both countries have left the country completely behind with the vaccination of their population.
In Alabama, only 37% of adults received even one dose of vaccine. Yet Cullman Regional Medical Center north of Birmingham cited the declining appointments in a statement announcing that the vaccination clinic was being relocated to an urgent care center. The Eastern Alabama Medical Center near Auburn University said it was preparing to end its vaccination program in a country where less than 18% were fully vaccinated.
“The number of vaccination requests has reached a plateau,” hospital spokesman John Atkinson said in a statement.
Health care officials in Missouri say they are also concerned that not enough people are looking for shots. A large federal vaccination center in downtown St. Louis. Louis administers less than half of its capacity of 3,000 shots per day. In St. Joseph, Missouri, has delayed vaccine appointments, says Dr. David Turner, chief medical officer for Mosaic Life Care.
“As a medical professional, I’m worried,” Turner told St. Joseph News-Press said. “We would like to see more people vaccinated. Even if they had COVID, we still recommend vaccination. ”
More than a third of the world’s deaths occurred in three countries – the United States, Mexico and Brazil, where a total of more than 1.1 million died. The virus claims about 12,000 lives every day.
The recent decision to suspend the use of the Johnson & Johnson vaccine due to preliminary reports of rare blood clots has left South Africa without shots in the fight against an aggressive coronavirus variant. South Africa has more than 1.5 million confirmed cases of COVID-19, including at least 53,000 deaths, representing more than 30% of all confirmed cases in Africa’s 54 countries.
Meanwhile, the German Ministry of Health announced on Wednesday that the country had a national record of more than 738,000 vaccinations, although authorities also warned that hospitals were seeing a dramatic increase in coronavirus patients.
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Bynum reported from Savannah, Georgia. Associated Press authors Ed White in Detroit, Jay Reeves in Birmingham, Alabama and Heather Hollingsworth in Mission, Kansas, contributed to this report.