Washington: The overall number of global coronavirus cases has topped 65.7 million, while the deaths have surged to more than 1.51 million, according to the Johns Hopkins University.
In its latest update on Saturday, the University’s Center for Systems Science and Engineering (CSSE) revealed that the current global caseload and death toll stood at 65,771,488 and 1,516,035, respectively.
The US is the worst-hit country with the world’s highest number of cases and deaths at 14,343,430 and 278,605, respectively, according to the CSSE.
India comes in second place in terms of cases at 9,571,559, while the country’s death toll soared to 139,188.
The other countries with more than a million confirmed cases are Brazil (6,533,968), Russia (2,382,012), France (2,321,703), the UK (1,694,800), Italy (1,688,939), Spain (1,684,647), Argentina (1,454,631), Colombia (1,352,607), Germany (1,157,514), Mexico (1,156,770), Poland (1,041,846) and Iran (1,016,835), the CSSE figures showed.
Brazil currently accounts for the second highest number of fatalities at 175,964.
The countries with a death toll above 20,000 are Mexico (108,173), the UK (60,714), Italy (58,852), France (54,859), Iran (49,695), Spain (46,252), Russia (41,730), Argentina (39,512), Colombia (37,467), Peru (36,076) and South Africa (21,963).
Meanwhile, the World Health Organization hopes to have half a billion doses of COVID-19 vaccines available for distribution by the global COVAX initiative in the first quarter of 2021, its chief scientist said.
To date 189 countries have joined the COVAX programme, which is backed by the WHO and seeks to ensure equitable distribution of vaccines. The United States is not among them, having secured bilateral deals.
The initial COVAX plan is to vaccinate the 20% of populations at highest risk, including health workers and people aged over 65.
The goal is to get at least 2 billion doses by end of 2021 which will be enough to vaccinate 20% of the populations of countries that are part of COVAX, chief scientist Soumya Swaminathan told a Geneva news conference.
This would be enough to bring to an end the acute phase of the pandemic by reducing mortality and the impact on health systems, she said.
Our goal, our hope is that in the first quarter of 2021 that we would have about half a billion of doses available to be distributed across the countries, in a fair manner, Swaminathan said.