COVID-19: New world record for cases, 1 billion doses taken | Corona Virus

More than a third of the additional infections recorded in 24 hours worldwide, or about 340,000, were on Indian soil, according to a tally by Agence France-Presse on Saturday.

In front of hospitals in major cities in India, queues of people diagnosed with the virus and their anxious relatives are growing.

Nearly 1 million new cases were identified in three days in this country of 1.3 billion people, where the sad national record was set on Friday in which 2,624 people died within 24 hours.

This brings the number of infections to 16.5 million, since the beginning of the epidemic, and nearly 190,000 deaths in India, which is now the second most affected country by the Corona virus, after the United States.

Lack of oxygen and medication

But experts believe that the numbers could actually be higher, and they attribute this new wave on Indian soil to A. Double boom Virus and mass events, such as the Hindu religious festival Khomb Mela That gathered millions of pilgrims.

In New Delhi, the capital that is confined to Monday, hospitals critically short of oxygen and medicines are calling on the government to provide them on a daily basis.

I saw three bodies in six minutesSaid Ravi Kumar, who managed to take his 80-year-old grandfather to the hospital after waiting all night in front of him.

Inside, there are no beds, only stretchers with two patients in each.

Many countries are closing their doors to India. Starting Sunday, only German citizens will be able to travel from that country to Germany, and Kuwait announced on Saturday the suspension of direct commercial flights to and from Indian soil.

As for the United States, they advise against traveling there, instead Canada suspended for 30 days Friday flights from India and Pakistan.

Variable detection in case First in Belgium, then in Switzerland on Saturday, anxiety in Europe.

If the outbreak recorded this week in Asia is mainly the result of the situation in India, then Nepal has also seen a spike in the epidemic (+ 242%), with 1,400 new cases per day.

Slow vaccination in Japan

Three months before the Olympics, the situation in Japan is also worrisome: the state of emergency will apply in Tokyo and three other provinces (Kyoto, Osaka, and Hyogo) from Sunday through at least May 11.

And the slow pace of vaccination feeds doubts about the country’s ability to organize the Olympic Games in less than a hundred days.

Covid-19 has claimed more than three million lives – at least 3088,103 – worldwide since the WHO’s office in China announced its appearance in late December 2019, following a report by Agence France-Presse on Saturday.

Billion doses, 207 countries

The one billion mark – at least 1,002,938,540 – of COVID-19 vaccines administered in 207 countries or territories was surpassed at the end of Saturday, according to an AFP tally from official sources.

More than half of them (58%) were injected into three countries: the United States (225.6 million), China (216.1 million) and India (138.4 million).

But in terms of its population, Israel comes first, with nearly six out of ten Israelis being fully vaccinated.

In the United States, this vaccination campaign is starting to pay off.

The resumption of vaccination, authorized Friday by health authorities, with Johnson and Johnson – with a single dose and stored in the refrigerator – will facilitate access to vulnerable groups.

It also advanced on the vaccination front in the European Union, where 128 million doses were administered to 21% of the population.

For its part, the European Medicines Agency (EMA) said after a new study that the benefits of AstraZeneca increase with age and continue to outweigh the risks, such as blood clots.

Germany is tougher

While many European countries, such as Italy, Switzerland, Belgium and France have programmed to ease restrictions, Germany is countering the pills by bolstering its arsenal against COVID-19 on Saturday, with a national curfew in particular.

The device imposes a tightening on health rules once the infection rate, which measures contamination over a period of a week, is greater than 100 for three days.

This is despite the protests of thousands of people in German cities, just like Saturday in eastern Switzerland, despite the gradual lifting of restrictions, and in London this time against vaccination passports.