New measures, new reports and highlights: an update on the latest developments in the Covid 19 pandemic worldwide.

– USA: lack of screening tests

The shortage of Covid-19 tests observed in the United States will soon be addressed, assured Dr Anthony Fauci, White House senior advisor on fighting the pandemic, on Sunday as the country observed an outbreak of cases of variant.

“One of the problems right now is that (the tests) won’t be available to everyone until January,” said the epidemiologist, while the US experienced a rush of tests over the year-end family vacation. especially in kits for home testing.

– Almost 8,000 flights worldwide canceled over the Christmas weekend

Around 7,900 flights were canceled by airlines around the world over the Christmas weekend, with the Omicron variant of Covid-19 continuing its meteoric rise during the holidays, including among flight attendants contaminated or exposed to the virus.

– Increased hospital admissions of children in New York

New York health officials are seeing an increase in the number of children hospitalized for Covid-19.

“The largest increase was in New York City, with visitor numbers quadrupling” between the week of December 5th and the week of December 19th, authorities said. Half of these approvals are for children under 5 who are too young to be vaccinated.

– 60 contaminated cruise ships –

More than 60 cruise ships are the subject of investigations by the American health authorities after the occurrence of Covid-19 cases on board, we read on Sunday on the website of the CDC, the most important health authority in the United States. According to the Washington Post daily, several ships have been denied stopovers in several Caribbean ports.

– Peru will buy 55 million vaccines for the fourth dose in 2022

Peru will buy 55 million doses of Covid-19 vaccine in 2022 to give medical workers and vulnerable populations a fourth injection, the government said.

– China: The city of Xi’an continues to tighten restrictions

The Chinese city of Xi’an, which has a population of 13 million, announced on Sunday a “total” disinfection and tightened restrictions at a time when China has seen a record number of Covid-19 contaminations for the past 21 months.

The Asian country has been following a “zero covid” strategy since last year, which consists of doing everything possible to keep the occurrence of new cases as low as possible. Authorities are redoubling their vigilance to avoid a major outbreak ahead of the Beijing Winter Olympics (February 4-20).

– More than 5.39 million deaths worldwide

The Covid-19 pandemic has claimed more than 5,395,400 lives from official sources on Sunday at 5:00 p.m. GMT, according to an AFP report.

In absolute terms, the hardest hit country is the United States with 816,597 deaths, followed by Brazil (618,392), India (479,682), Russia (304,218) and Mexico (298,759).

Among the hardest hit countries, Peru is the one that has the most deaths in relation to its population.

Europe is the region that currently has the highest number of deaths in the world, with 53% of the world total in the last seven days, followed by the US / Canada zone (22%).

The World Health Organization (WHO) estimates, taking into account the excess mortality directly and indirectly linked to Covid-19, that the number of victims of the pandemic could be two to three times higher than the officially recorded.

burs-dth / ybl