Rome, June 8 (beraking latest news Salute) – In about a year and a half, from the first news on the existence of Sars-Cov-2 isolated in China, the voronavirus has spread throughout the world, infecting 173,639,206 people and killing 737,447. The pandemic hit the different regions one after the other in waves, spreading several times and transforming itself to reappear in different forms. Since then, numerous vaccines have been developed and the campaign launched globally has slowed the potency of the virus, also stemming the spread of its variants. To date, the doses of the anti-Covid vaccine injected around the world have been 2,145,266,362.
Even today, however, some regions or countries have a high number of cases or deaths. The countries with the highest number of active cases are currently the United States (5,436,877), India (1,304,143), Brazil (1,102,797). Those in which the most cases have occurred in the last two weeks are India (1,838,678), Brazil (790,009), Argentina (390,898), Colombia (322,402).
Examining the different continents, Asia, the one where the pandemic that developed in China began, did not initially register a number of cases or deaths lower than those that subsequently emerged in Europe and North America. But recently with the peaks reached by India, Malaysia and the Philippines, the picture has changed. India has recorded 28,996,473 cases – second country for number of infections since the beginning of the pandemic after the United States – and 351,309 deaths. The latest wave that had caused the country to reach very high peaks of daily infections is now slowly slowing down, but experts agree that the figures – in particular those relating to deaths – are much higher than the official ones.
In Latin America, Brazil is in third place in the ranking of the countries most affected by Covid-19 with 16,984,218 infections and in second place – with its 474,414 deaths since the beginning of the pandemic – for the number of deaths. An emergency situation has recently occurred – again in Latin America – in Peru, where the number of deaths per 100 thousand inhabitants – 574 – has become the highest in the world. There has also been an increase in the number of cases recently in Argentina, Bolivia, Chile, Colombia, Paraguay and Uruguay.
A return of infections has also been observed in some European states in recent months, but over time the situation has been stemmed in the most affected countries, from Turkey to Russia to Germany, and in general in Europe the trend is downward. The United States dominate the ranking of countries with the highest number of cases and deaths, respectively 33,378,148 and 597,952 but not if observed as a percentage per 100 thousand inhabitants (14th place for infections, 20th for deaths). Cases and infections are decreasing as the vaccination campaign progresses.
Several countries in the Middle East experienced major successive waves of the pandemic, most notably Iran and Iraq, which had the most deaths. Iran in particular has the highest number of deaths in the region and observed the highest spike in infections in April – 25,582 new cases on the 14th of the month – but the situation is gradually coming under control. Israel, which has successfully completed its vaccination campaign, has seen the number of infections and deaths drop rapidly in recent months.
Africa is about to reach five million cases of infections and deaths have been 130 thousand, considering however that the true proportions of the pandemic are not known, since in many states checks and tests are proceeding at a very slow pace. According to official figures, South Africa is the country most affected on the continent (1,699,848 cases since the beginning of the pandemic and 57,063 deaths). In Morocco the infections were 521,530, the deaths 9,181, Tunisia, Ethiopia and Egypt have all exceeded 250 thousand cases.
Australia and New Zealand were cited as an example for the response to the pandemic: Australia (119 cases and 4 deaths per 100,000 inhabitants), New Zealand (55 cases and one death per 100,000 inhabitants). Effective restrictive measures have led the two countries to have numbers of infections and deaths similar to those recorded in French Polynesia, in the Pacific Ocean.