COVID-19 update

At press time, there had been more than 182.8 million cases of COVID-19 worldwide and, resulting from those, more than 3.9 million deaths.

The Delta variant of COVID-19, which originated in India, is becoming the dominant variant around the world. Delta is more infectious but not necessarily more deadly than other variants. At press time, most new cases of COVID in the UK, Russia and the EU were of the Delta variant, which was also becoming prevalent among new cases in the US. In Australia, infections of Delta were causing more than 200 new cases per day at press time, causing most of the country to go back into lockdown.

Each vaccine approved by the US and EU has been shown to be effective against Delta. Only 5% of Australians have been fully vaccinated, almost none of those under age 60.

On June 20, Brazil reached 500,000 COVID-related deaths, the second-highest total in the world after that of the US. In the two weeks leading to that date, Brazil was averaging 77,000 new cases and 2,000 deaths per day, among the highest rates in the world. Less than 20% of Brazilian adults had received even one vaccine dose by press time. Continuing with 2-week rolling averages, in South America, Colombia was seeing a sharp increase in new cases, averaging up to 30,000 per day at press time.

Also at press time, India was averaging about 47,000 new cases a day, down from a peak of more than 400,000 in May, the highest daily average of any country at any time.

In Africa, South Africa went from fewer than 1,000 new cases a day to more than 17,000, while Zambia and Namibia grew from fewer than 100 to more than 2,000. In Oceania, Fiji, which had had fewer than 100 cases total, suddenly increased to an average of 286 new cases a day by July 1. No other Pacific nation had an average higher than 40.