Worldwide COVID news at a glance

1   Delta spiked deaths in Africa by 80%

Coronavirus deaths in Africa rose rapidly over the past month, as fatalities surged by 80 percent within the last four weeks, the World Health Organization has said. CNN reported that WHO’s Vaccine Introduction Officer for the African Region, Phionah Atuhebwe said the continent was witnessing an unprecedented rise in coronavirus fatalities. “COVID-19 death rates have increased across Africa, with the highest weekly rate (6,343) to date reported during the week starting 19 July 2021,” said Atuhebwe. 

Only around 1.5 percent of Africa’s more than one billion people have been fully vaccinated against Covid-19. Much of the continent relies on donations from the global vaccine sharing scheme COVAX, as well as donations from China, India, and the US. Africa’s slow vaccination rate has been largely hinged on global vaccine inequality as wealthier countries in the West stockpile more Covid shots than they need.

2   Cambodia begins booster shots

In an effort to battle the deadly coronavirus, Cambodia began offering a third-dose booster shot against COVID-19 on Sunday. Switching between the AstraZeneca and Chinese COVID-19 vaccines, 500,000 to one million frontline workers and their family members in seven provinces bordering Thailand will be among the first to receive the vaccine. 

Earlier Cambodia had started rolling out COVID-19 vaccines for teenagers in its capital Phnom Penh and three provinces. “The vaccination for children today is a key step to herd immunity in communities,” said the Cambodian leader. Cambodia’s mass inoculation campaign has so far seen more than seven million people out of the ten million eligible receive the UK-produced AstraZeneca, the US-donated Johnson & Johnson, or the Chinese-made Sinovac and Sinopharm jabs. 

3   Constant surging numbers of cases in the US

The US announced 100,000 new covid cases last Sunday, compared to around 11,000 daily cases in June. It recorded 250,000 cases per day in January during its peak winter wave, the NY Post Reports.

Weekly cases passed 750,000 on Friday, the most since early February. Meanwhile, deaths and hospitalisations are also rising, with more than 44,000 Americans hospitalised from Covid-19, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. While this is still well under the pre-vaccine peak in January, which saw more than 120,000 Americans hospitalised, it’s a whopping 40 per cent increase in a one-week period, and a 400 per cent increase since June. Nearly 500 deaths are being recorded in the US every day due to the virus, that’s compared to 270 deaths a fortnight ago, according skyrocketed to 3500 a day.

4   Indonesia’s outbreak is a concern

Experts fear Indonesia, considered one of the world’s COVID-19 epicentres, is now a high-risk “hotspot” for the emergence of a new coronavirus “super strain”.

As a second wave of the coronavirus has swept through Indonesia’s densely populated Java island and Bali in recent months, the hospital system buckled under the pressure of an influx of cases. With medical resources stretched to their limits, desperate relatives have struggled to obtain oxygen tanks for family members struggling to breathe in hospital.

5   Sweden cases no longer at low levels 

The spread of Covid-19 continues to increase in large parts of Sweden, with new cases rising 30 percent in one week. The Public Health Agency urged everyone who is not fully vaccinated to be tested when returning from travel outside the Nordic countries.

There were 3,451 confirmed new cases of Covid-19 in Sweden last week, up 30 percent on the week before. The 14-day incidence rate stood at 59 cases per 100,000 people, which the Public Health Agency noted “means that the spread of infection is no longer at low levels”. The proportion of confirmed Covid-19 cases that could be linked to international travel was around 17 percent last week. The spread of infection has continued to increase in parts of Europe and in several other countries, as well as in Sweden. 

6   Japan hits one million COVID-19 cases

Japan has reached the milestone of one million coronavirus cases, with infections soaring in Tokyo and other urban areas as the country struggles to contain the Delta variant.

New cases in Tokyo on Friday hit 4,515, the second highest after Thursday’s record 5,042, while the neighbouring, populous prefecture of Kanagawa saw its cases soaring to more than 2,000, quadrupling in less than two weeks. Infections in Osaka, the biggest city in the country’s west, also rose to a record-breaking 1,310, in a sign the pathogen is quickly spreading outside Tokyo.