World Passes Grim Milestone of 4 Million COVID Deaths

By Staff, Agencies

The world has crossed the "tragic" threshold of 4 million deaths from COVID-19, the World Health Organization announced on Wednesday.

"We have just passed the tragic milestone of 4 million listed Covid-19 deaths," said WHO boss Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, adding that the true figure was "most certainly" higher.

He warned that the "world was at a dangerous point in this pandemic," which emerged in China at the end of 2019, due to the new variants and the lifting of health restrictions. The WHO has warned against lifting restrictions too broadly, including in countries with high vaccination rates.

In the United States, where the vaccination campaign was a success, cases of covid-19 are increasing again, according to data from health authorities on Wednesday. The seven-day average of the number of new daily infections stood at just under 13,900 cases on Tuesday, compared to around 11,500 two weeks ago. And the Delta variant, which initially appeared in India, is now the majority in the number of cases.

In Brazil, the second most affected country in the world by the pandemic after the United States, this particularly contagious variant has appeared in the metropolis of Sao Paulo.

In an Asia hit hard by the new epidemic outbreak, Indonesia, one of the new fronts of the pandemic, has for the first time crossed the threshold of 1,000 daily deaths from COVID-19, a mortality rate 10 times higher than it was less than a month ago.