As the world surpasses 20 million Covid-19 cases, the latest tally figures suggest that the pandemic is stabilizing. It comes as Russia hit a major milestone in the global battle against the virus by approving the first vaccine.
An AFP tally of official sources found that while the world has shot past the 20 million milestone for infections, with some 733,842 Covid-19-related deaths, the spread of the pandemic appears to be holding.
Four in 10 cases recorded are in either Brazil (3,057,470 infections and 101,752 deaths) or the US (5,075,678 cases and 163,282 deaths), with roughly one million new cases recorded every four days since mid-July.
Meanwhile, in more good news, Russia’s Health Ministry has given official approval for the world’s first official coronavirus vaccine.
It took 94 days for Covid-19 to reach its first million cases since the initial outbreak in Wuhan, China. Some 86 days after that, the world had recorded 10 million cases and that number has doubled in the past 44 days.
Latin America and the Caribbean recorded more than 575,000 cases in the past week for a total of 5,601,470 cases and 221,281 deaths, making it the hardest-hit area in the world, ahead of the US and Canada (5,195,417 cases and 172,300 deaths) and Asia (3,493,026 cases, 72,486 deaths) in third place.
Africa (1,057,730 infections, 23,582 deaths) and Oceania (23,351 cases, 346 deaths) are the least-affected regions.
However, the total number of cases reported depends entirely on the extent of testing within a region, so the true number of cases and therefore the regional rankings are subject to major changes.
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