Worldwide COVID-19 cases yesterday passed 150 million, as India recorded another 385,000 new cases in the past 24 hours and Brazil’s death toll surpassed 400,000.
According to official data, 150.3 million COVID-19 cases have been declared since the virus was first discovered in China in December 2019.
The number of new daily infections has more than doubled since mid-February. The figure had slowed to a more than 350,000 a day in January, but is now 821,000 a day.
Photo: AFP
In India, 2.5 million cases have been detected over the past seven days, a daily average of 357,000.
The rise in infections has been blamed in part on a new variant, but also on failure to follow virus restrictions, the WHO said on Thursday.
India recorded 385,000 new cases in the past 24 hours — a new global record — and almost 3,500 deaths, according to official data that many experts suspect falls short of the true toll.
More than 200,000 have died from the virus in India, more than 45,000 of them last month, although many other nations have suffered far worse death rates on a per capita basis.
Brazil, with a population around a sixth of India, has recorded 401,186 deaths as of Thursday.
The country has struggled to secure enough vaccines as the Senate investigates whether Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro’s government has exacerbated the crisis.
The Brazilian Ministry of Health reported 3,001 COVID-19 deaths in the past 24 hours.
The country is also struggling with vaccine shortages. About 28 million people have received a first COVID-19 vaccine does, which is just more than 13 percent of the population, while about 12.7 million have received a second.
On Tuesday, the Senate opened an investigation into whether there was criminal neglect in the Bolsonaro administration’s handling of the pandemic.
The president has downplayed the virus, fought stay-at-home measures to contain it and rejected offers of various vaccines — including, initially, Pfizer’s.
“I was wrong about nothing,” he told supporters in defending his handling of the pandemic as the commission opened.
Bolsanoro said that the economic damage of measures such as a national lockdown would have caused more suffering than the virus itself.
Brazilian Senator Renan Calheiros, the commission’s rapporteur, vowed to hold officials accountable for mishandling the crisis.
The senators are to investigate, among other things, horrific scenes such as those that unfolded earlier this year in Manaus, where dozens of COVID-19 patients suffocated to death due to oxygen shortages.
“The country has the right to know who contributed to these thousands of deaths, and they must be punished immediately,” Calheiros said.
‘IN A DIFFERENT PLACE’: The envoy first visited Shanghai, where he attended a Chinese basketball playoff match, and is to meet top officials in Beijing tomorrow US Secretary of State Antony Blinken yesterday arrived in China on his second visit in a year as the US ramps up pressure on its rival over its support for Russia while also seeking to manage tensions with Beijing. The US diplomat tomorrow is to meet China’s top brass in Beijing, where he is also expected to plead for restraint as Taiwan inaugurates president-elect William Lai (賴清德), and to raise US concerns on Chinese trade practices. However, Blinken is also seeking to stabilize ties, with tensions between the world’s two largest economies easing since his previous visit in June last year. At the
Nearly half of China’s major cities are suffering “moderate to severe” levels of subsidence, putting millions of people at risk of flooding, especially as sea levels rise, according to a study of nationwide satellite data released yesterday. The authors of the paper, published by the journal Science, found that 45 percent of China’s urban land was sinking faster than 3mm per year, with 16 percent at more than 10mm per year, driven not only by declining water tables, but also the sheer weight of the built environment. With China’s urban population already in excess of 900 million people, “even a small portion
UNSETTLING IMAGES: The scene took place in front of TV crews covering the Trump trial, with a CNN anchor calling it an ‘emotional and unbelievably disturbing moment’ A man who doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire outside the courthouse where former US president Donald Trump is on trial has died, police said yesterday. The New York City Police Department (NYPD) said the man was declared dead by staff at an area hospital. The man was in Collect Pond Park at about 1:30pm on Friday when he took out pamphlets espousing conspiracy theories, tossed them around, then doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire, officials and witnesses said. A large number of police officers were nearby when it happened. Some officers and bystanders rushed
Beijing is continuing to commit genocide and crimes against humanity against Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities in its western Xinjiang province, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a report published on Monday, ahead of his planned visit to China this week. The State Department’s annual human rights report, which documents abuses recorded all over the world during the previous calendar year, repeated language from previous years on the treatment of Muslims in Xinjiang, but the publication raises the issue ahead of delicate talks, including on the war in Ukraine and global trade, between the top U.S. diplomat and Chinese