The Overseas Situation Report Monday 2 August 2021  

by Mike Evans 

“The world we are experiencing today is a result of our collective consciousness, and if we want a new world, each of us must start taking responsibility for helping create it.”

– Rosemary Fillmore

If anyone thought we were seeing the beginning of the end of the pandemic, the past week has shown that we cannot take this virus for granted. All across the world many countries that thought they were over the worst have seen new cases emerging by the day. The worrying trend in some parts of the world is that deaths are also on the rise after many had seen the numbers reduce in the past few months.

In this report we take a look at the trend over the past week in both Northern and Southern Americas and the countries that lie inbetween and see where the virus is more prevalent than ever and where there does seem to be a slow down of both infections and deaths.

Let’s start by showing what has happened across the whole world in the past 7 days. We have seen an 11% increase in cases compared to the previous week and a 12% increase in deaths due to covid 19.

According to Worldometer.info there were 4,077,798 new cases reported in the past week. To put these figures into context we will look at the individual areas of the world that worldometer uses to show its statistics.

First to North America. This includes the countries of North America, the Central Americas and the Caribbean. In this area there has been a 41% increase in new cases during the past seven days compared to the previous week. This equates to an increased figure of 756,360 compared to 536,921 the week previous.

The USA, Mexico and Cuba account for almost 700,000 of these cases with the rest of the area contributing a relatively small number of cases. In terms of deaths the area recorded an increase of 22% with numbers rising from 4,900 in the previous 7 days to 5,988 in the past week. As with the increased cases, the same three countries accounted for almost 5000 of the deaths.

In the USA, weekly reported cases have risen by 51%, from 354,993 to 534,699. The increase in cases has also seen an  increase of 20%  in deaths in the past week from 1862 in the previous 7 days to 2228. The spread of the highly contagious Delta variant is largely responsible for the uptick in cases. This week we saw the President set out a new plan to combat this surge in new cases. President Joe Biden announced that all federal employees must attest to being vaccinated against Covid-19 or face strict protocols including regular testing, masking and other mitigation measures. These requirements will apply to military and civilian Defense Department personnel, and the department is also considering adding Covid-19 vaccines to the list of required vaccines for military personnel, the Pentagon said.

“With freedom comes responsibility,” Biden said. “So, please, exercise responsible judgment. Get vaccinated — for yourself, for the people you love, for your country.” Biden called on states and local governments to give each newly fully-vaccinated person $100 as an incentive to get more people inoculated.

“If incentives help us beat this virus, I believe we should use them,” the President said. “We all benefit if we can get more people vaccinated.”

Meanwhile its Northern neighbour Canada also saw a large increase of 56% in the week although in terms of actual numbers the rise was not as significant as the US. Canada’s top health officials are warning that Canada could be seeing the beginning of a fourth COVID-19 wave driven by the more infectious delta variant. The seriousness of the pandemic’s resurgence will depend largely on vaccination coverage — especially as provinces move forward with reopening plans — Chief Public Health Officer Dr. Theresa Tam said today. “I think we are in a slightly precarious period at the moment, in between these people trying to get the vaccines in and reopening,” Tam said. “As soon as that balance is tipped, and it wouldn’t take very much with a highly transmissible virus, you’re going to see an uptick in cases.”

The Public Health Agency of Canada released data on Friday that show fully vaccinated Canadians have accounted for less than one per cent of new COVID-19 cases and hospitalizations since December. Of the entire population eligible to receive a vaccine, 81 per cent have received one dose and 66 per cent are fully vaccinated.

Further south in the Caribbean cases have risen dramatically in the past week although again with the populations of these countries the actual number of new cases is relatively small compared to the US.

The French owned territory of Guadalupe has followed France in seeing a big rise in cases from just 406 in the previous week to 1,724 in the past 7 days. Of the 29 Caribbean Islands that provide figures only Barbados, Dominican Republic, Cayman Islands, Costa Rica and Dominica have seen a drop in new cases in the past week. Other notable increases have come from Cuba, Martinique and Trinidad & Tobago. Apart from Haiti and Cuba the region does not seem to be experiencing the issue of deaths in the same way as the Northern American countries are in the past week.

Further south in the continent and we see that the countries that make up South America are faring slightly better than their northern neighbours in the past week. The past week saw a drop of 11% in reported cases compared to the previous 7 days. Brazil accounts for more than 50% of all the new cases with 2457,830. This is a drop of 11% on the previous week. The trend continues in deaths across the region with a drop of 10% week on week.

Only Guyana showed a rise in new cases with an increase of 22% which equates from 499 the previous week to 608 in the past seven days. Regretfully they have also seen a 55% increase in deaths from 11 in the previous week to 17 in the past seven days.

Colombia, which had seen new cases and deaths rise significantly over the past month, saw a dramatic drop of 32% in cases and 21% in deaths in the past week.

The drop in new infections across the region comes despite only Uruguay and Chile having vaccinated almost 65% of its population. The rest of the continent has been slow to vaccinate and currently only Colombia with 23% fully vaccinated is next highest followed by Brazil with 19% of its population fully vaccinated. It is a disturbing feature that both Paraguay and Venezuela have fully vaccinated just 4%  of their populations.

Unlike the rest of the world where the Delta variant is the major threat in South America the Lambda variant has been wreaking havoc with many of the South American countries.

In Peru, which has the highest deaths per capita across the whole world, this variant is responsible for almost all the cases in Peru. The WHO classified this variant as C.37 as a “variant of interest” after it appeared in a number of countries simultaneously. The virologist Pablo Tsukayama and his team at Lima’s Cayetano Heredia University have traced the evolution of the lambda variant in Peru for months after identifying it through genome testing. Lambda spread more quickly than variants deemed far more dangerous by the WHO out of the way, even prevailing over the gamma variant, which had run rampant in neighboring Brazil.

“We had 200 lambda infections in December,” said Tsukayama. “By the end of March, it made up half of all samples taken in Lima. [In June, it was] more than 80% of all infections nationwide. Lambda has become the dominant variant in Peru in a very short period of time.”

Tsukayama said lambda was more transmissible, which had helped it spread so quickly in Peru. “With  the highest mortality rates in the world, we are the country that has struggled most when it comes to the coronavirus,” he said. “Therefore, it is probably no wonder that the new variant has gotten its start here.” By the end of July, COVID-19 deaths in Peru had surpassed 195,000.

The drop in recorded cases in the past week is good news for Peru, as is the 22% decrease in deaths but until many more of their citizens get fully vaccinated these figures will remain very high.

We can all hope that those wealthy nations with surplus vaccines continue to send them to the poorer nations so the pandemic can be stopped across the world and not just in certain areas of the world.

Until the next time, Stay Safe. 

Total Cases Worldwide – 198,879,142 

Total Deaths Worldwide – 4,238,503 

Total Recovered Worldwide – 179,521,450 

Total Active Cases Worldwide – 15,119,189 (7.6% of the total cases) 

Total Closed Cases Worldwide – 183,759,953

Information and resources:

https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/

https://edition.cnn.com/2021/07/29/health/us-coronavirus-thursday/index.html

https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/weekly-trends/#countries

https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/canada-could-be-start-of-4th-wave-1.6123894

https://ourworldindata.org/covid-vaccinations

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