Over one million people have died from COVID-19 in North and South America, the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO) said on Wednesday.
In the last week alone, two million more cases were reported in the Americas, with the United States being the main driver of the outbreak, the WHO regional branch said. Globally, there have been over 100 million cases and 2.1 million deaths with 44 million cases in North and South America, according to a Reuters tally.
Throughout North America, there is growing pressure on hospital capacity and in some U.S. states nearly 80 percent of ICU beds are being used to treat COVID-19 patients, the PAHO head Carissa Etienne said in a virtual briefing.
A patient is moved from an ambulance into the COVID-19 treatment center at Dr. Carlos MacGregor Sanchez General Hospital in Mexico City, Mexico, January 10, 2021. /AP
Similar rates are seen in many states in Mexico, where the number of cases is tripling in some regions, Etienne warned.
Mexico, one of the countries hit hardest by the coronavirus pandemic, released new figures Wednesday showing that the death toll was far higher than first reported for much of last year.
The Latin American nation registered 108,658 deaths from COVID-19 up to the end of August 2020, national statistics institute INEGI said. The figure is more than 68 percent higher than the 64,414 deaths from the new coronavirus reported at the time by the health ministry for the same period.
"Many people aren't dying in hospitals, they're dying at home... That may partly explain this difference," INEGI statistician Edgar Vielma told a Mexican radio network.
Mexico's COVID-19 death toll officially now stands at 152,016, according to the latest update from the health ministry released on Tuesday. It is the world's fourth-highest fatality toll after the United States, Brazil and India. Including suspected deaths from the virus, the figure stands at 171,378, according to the government.
The country of around 126 million has officially registered nearly 1.8 million coronavirus cases. They include President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, who announced on Sunday that he had COVID-19.
Mexico City has been in a state of maximum alert and partial lockdown since mid-December, with more than 90 percent of hospital beds full due to soaring infections.
Healthcare workers wait to get a dose of the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine for COVID-19 in an outdoor area of the "Clinica da Familia Estacio de Sa" in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, January 27, 2021. /AP
The hospital situation in Brazil is also worrisome, with three-quarters of ICU beds occupied in many Brazilian states, Etienne said.
In Manaus, many patients await beds in hospitals collapsing under the pressure of a second wave of coronavirus infections complicated by a new variant of the virus detected there.
Variants that have emerged in the region or outside of it have been detected in 14 countries in North and South America, the PAHO said.
Only a few cases of the British and South African mutations have been found, mainly on travelers, and they do not appear to be spreading in the region, according to the PAHO, but the Amazon variant that has emerged in the Brazilian city of Manaus does appear to have a high transmission rate.
Colombia will restrict flights to and from Brazil for a month to prevent the spread of the new strain of the coronavirus circulating there, President Ivan Duque said on Wednesday.
Monitoring at the border between Brazil, Latin America's largest country, and Colombia will also be increased, the president said.
"As a preventative measure, for a period of 30 days while all observations are carried out, restrictive measures will be taken on flights from Colombia to Brazil and from Brazil to Colombia," Duque said.
U.S. health experts appear on screen during a White House briefing on the Biden administration's response to the COVID-19 pandemic, January 27, 2021. /AP
Meanwhile in the U.S., Joe Biden's administration launched its new level-with-America health briefings Wednesday with a projection that as many as 90,000 more Americans will die from the coronavirus in the next four weeks – a sobering warning as the government strains to improve delivery and injection of vaccines.
The tone of the hour-long briefing was in line with President Biden's promise to be straight with the nation about the state of the outbreak that has already claimed more than 425,000 U.S. lives.
The deaths projection wasn't much different from what Biden himself has said, but nonetheless served as a stark reminder of the brutal road ahead.
"I know this is not news we all want to hear, but this is something we must say so we are all aware," said Dr. Rochelle Walensky, the new director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. "If we are united in action we can turn things around."
The new briefings, set for three times a week, are part of Biden's attempt to rebuild trust and mobilize Americans to follow health guidance on the coronavirus and to break down public resistance to the vaccine.
The PAHO expects the deployment of COVID-19 vaccines made available for poorer countries through the UN-led COVAX facility to start in March, with some 164 million doses. The COVAX facility is expected to deploy two billion doses worldwide.
According to the data compiled by Bloomberg, more than 82.5 million doses in 59 countries have been administered, which only covers one percent of the world's population. The latest rate was roughly 3.95 million doses a day, on average.
(With input from agencies)