Photo : webshot.

August 5, 2021

Andrew Campbell 

COVID-19 infections continue to rise in 90 countries. According to Reuters' COVID-19 Global tracker, there have been at least 200,225,000 reported infections and 4,417,000 reported deaths caused by the new coronavirus. So far, at least 199 countries have begun vaccinating people against the coronavirus, with at least 4,298,577,000 doses of the vaccine administered.

The Delta variant, which has been detected in at least 132 countries, has also increased COVID-19 infections by 80% in the last four weeks globally. The rapidly increasing death toll and infection rate of the pandemic are being driven by the highly transmissible Delta variant, which is thought to be more lethal than the original coronavirus strain.

According to data from state hospitals and nearly 68,000 patients in Jakarta from May to July, the COVID-19 death rate for people who were not vaccinated in the Indonesian capital of Jakarta was more than three times higher than for those who were, according to new health ministry data. Those who had not been vaccinated died at a rate of 15.5%, compared to 4.1% for those who had received two shots of either the Sinovac or AstraZeneca vaccine.

Meanwhile, the World Health Organization's (WHO) Director-General, Dr. Tedros Adhanom Gebreyesus, called on August 4 for a moratorium on COVID-19 vaccine boosters until at least the end of September to allow the world's most vulnerable people to be immunized. During his weekly press conference, the head of the UN health organization denounced the fact that more than four billion COVID-19 vaccine doses had been administered around the world, with 80 percent of them going to high- and middle-income countries, despite the fact that they accommodate less than half of the world's population.