The global impact after six months of COVID-19 pandemic
PARIS, France — The World Health Organization (WHO) announced on March 11 that the outbreak of Covid-19 had become a pandemic. Six months on the virus has cost the lives of over 900,000 people.
Back in March the death toll stood at 4,200 from 120,000 cases, with most of the fatalities in the Wuhan region of China where the virus first came to light last December.
Those figures were enough to cause concern back then. But now, 28 million people have been infected worldwide, according to an AFP tally, while the death toll heads inexorably towards a million.
From China to global pandemic
When the WHO declared the pandemic in March, Covid-19 had already spread to five continents, though more than two-thirds of known cases had been registered in Asia.
Though the virus was first detected in Wuhan, Europe quickly became the new hotspot. In the second half of March more than 80 percent of new cases worldwide were detected there.
Lockdown measures were introduced, including the closure of schools and offices and bans on public gatherings.
From April 10-16, Europe suffered its worst week of the pandemic so far, with 282,763 new cases and 27,447 deaths.
The Covid-19 epicentre then shifted across the Atlantic, with the United States becoming the worst affected country while Latin America and the Caribbean nations were badly hit.
The US saw virus figures surge with more than 470,000 cases in one week in late July.
Latin America suffers
The nations of Latin America saw the numbers of Covid-19 cases and deaths rise sharply from June, accounting for around half of the new cases worldwide during the following months.
Today the region is the worst affected, with more than 300,000 fatalities from around eight million infections.
The Middle East with 1,625,285 cases and 39,038 deaths, Africa ((1,323,325 cases, 31,893 deaths) and the more isolated Oceania (30,306 cases, 841 deaths) remain the least affected regions, according to official figures.
The virus figures have started to rise again in Asia, with an average of 80,000 new cases per day and India the worst hit.
Global figures stabilise
Looked at globally, the pandemic figures have largely stabilised since mid-August with around 260,000 new cases and 5,500 deaths on a daily basis.
But the disparities between regions remain stark.
The United States has suffered the most deaths with 190,873, followed by Brazil with 128,539, India with 75,062, and Mexico with 69,095. Together they account for half of the global total.
New local hotspots
Recent spikes elsewhere are causing fresh concern.
At the weekend Israel passed the grim total of 1,000 Covid-19 deaths.
Spain has now registered over half a million infections. In France, where levels of testing have been high, the daily number of new cases, now above 7,000, is worrying authorities in France and beyond. Britain has introduced a two-week quarantine for anyone arriving from France.
In the Middle East, Iran is seeing around 2,000 new cases per day.
In Africa, Morocco has seen higher infection levels remain stubbornly in place since mid-July, at around 1,700 cases per day.
The good news
Some places haven't registered any new Covid-19 cases for several weeks, including Laos in Asia and the Palau archipelago in the Pacific Ocean.
China hasn't officially announced any new coronavirus deaths since mid-May.
The Vatican is a rare exception in Europe, declaring just 12 cases, the most recent one in May.
A handful of nations claim to have escaped the pandemic entirely, including Turkmenistan which is however facing a worrying rise in pneumonia cases, according to the WHO.
North Korea has never admitted to any virus cases on its territory, a claim treated with scepticism, while some isolated Pacific islands have made similar claims.
Follow this page for updates on a mysterious pneumonia outbreak that has struck dozens of people in China.
New Zealand Prime Minister Chris Hipkins says on Sunday that he had contracted COVID-19, testing positive at a key point in his flailing campaign for re-election.
Hipkins saYS on his official social media feed that he would need to isolate for up to five days -- less than two weeks before his country's general election.
The leader of the centre-left Labour Party said he started to experience cold symptoms on Saturday and had cancelled most of his weekend engagements. — AFP
The World Health Organization and US health authorities say Friday they are closely monitoring a new variant of COVID-19, although the potential impact of BA.2.86 is currently unknown.
The WHO classified the new variant as one under surveillance "due to the large number (more than 30) of spike gene mutations it carries", it wrote in a bulletin about the pandemic late Thursday.
So far, the variant has only been detected in Israel, Denmark and the United States. — AFP
The World Health Organization says on Friday that the number of new COVID-19 cases reported worldwide rose by 80% in the last month, days after designating a new "variant of interest".
The WHO declared in May that Covid is no longer a global health emergency, but has warned that the virus will continue to circulate and mutate, causing occasional spikes in infections, hospitalisations and deaths.
In its weekly update, the UN agency said that nations reported nearly 1.5 million new cases from July 10 to August 6, an 80% increase compared to the previous 28 days. — AFP
The head of US intelligence says that there was no evidence that the COVID-19 virus was created in the Chinese government's Wuhan research lab.
In a declassified report, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) says they had no information backing recent claims that three scientists at the lab were some of the very first infected with COVID-19 and may have created the virus themselves.
Drawing on intelligence collected by various member agencies of the US intelligence community (IC), the ODNI report says some scientists at the Wuhan lab had done genetic engineering of coronaviruses similar to COVID-19. — AFP
Boris Johnson deliberately misled MPs over Covid lockdown-breaking parties in Downing Street when he was prime minister, a UK parliament committee ruled on Thursday.
The cross-party Privileges Committee said Johnson, 58, would have been suspended as an MP for 90 days for "repeated contempts (of parliament) and for seeking to undermine the parliamentary process".
But he avoided any formal sanction by his peers in the House of Commons by resigning as an MP last week.
In his resignation statement last Friday, Johnson pre-empted publication of the committee's conclusions, claiming a political stitch-up, even though the body has a majority from his own party.
He was unrepentant again on Thursday, accusing the committee of being "anti-democratic... to bring about what is intended to be the final knife-thrust in a protracted political assassination".
Calling it "beneath contempt", he said it was "for the people of this to decide who sits in parliament, not Harriet Harman", the veteran opposition Labour MP who chaired the seven-person committee. — AFP
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