More than 625,000 new cases of covid-19 and 13,988 deaths were recorded in the last 24 hours, which corresponds to a new daily ‘record’ of deaths in just one day, according to the balance sheet published this Wednesday by Johns Hopkins University.
In total, since the beginning of the pandemic, more than 73.6 million infections and 1.6 million deaths by covid-19 have been reported worldwide.
According to the new data, the global count also shows that more than 41.6 million people have recovered from infection with the new coronavirus, with India ‘leading’ with more than 9.4 million people cured.
The United States is the country in the world most affected by the pandemic, with 16.7 million infections and more than 303,000 deaths. It follows India (with almost 10 million cases and 144 thousand deaths) and Brazil (with almost 7 million infections and 182 thousand fatalities).
In Europe, the three countries with the most cases of the new coronavirus are France (2.4 million), the United Kingdom (1.8 million) and Italy (1.8 million). The three countries on the continent with the highest number of deaths are Italy (65 thousand), the United Kingdom (65 thousand) and France (59 thousand).
A study published on Wednesday points out that almost a quarter of the world’s population may not have access to a vaccine against covid-19 by 2022, but more than half want to be inoculated.
According to the analysis by researchers at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, 51% of these doses are destined for high-income countries, which represent only 14% of the world population, with the remaining 49% going to the poorest countries, which have more than 85% of the population.
The President of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyem, called on the European Union this Wednesday to start “as soon as possible” a vaccination campaign against covid-19, to start up simultaneously in the 27 Member States, to ensure the eradication of the “horrible virus”.
This Tuesday the deputy general director of Health, Rui Portugal, admitted that vaccination in Portugal may start earlier than expected (eight days before), if the European Medicines Agency approves the Pfizer vaccine as early as next week.
Portugal accounts for at least 5,733 deaths associated with covid-19 in 353,576 confirmed cases of infection, according to the latest bulletin from the Directorate-General for Health (DGS).
The country has been in a state of emergency since November 9 and until December 23, a period during which there is a mandatory curfew in counties with the highest risk of contagion.
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