Covid-19 has claimed the lives of 750,000 people around the world, according to latest balance sheets | National

The world overcame this Thursday 750,000 dead due to the new coronavirus, with firm progress in Latin America, which has five countries among the ten on the planet with the most infections, while measures of all kinds are multiplied to try to stop the pandemic.

With more than 20.6 million infections since it emerged in December in China, Covid-19 crossed a new threshold by reaching 750,003 deaths this Thursday at 8:10 a.m., according to the Agence France-Presse count.

Latin America and the Caribbean are the region with the highest number of infections (5,822,258) and deaths (228,572).

Five Latin American countries are also among the ten affected on the planet: Brazil (2nd with 3,164,785 cases and 104,201 deaths), Peru (7th, 498,555 cases and 21,713 deaths), Mexico (8th with 498,380 infections and 54,666 deaths), Colombia ( 9th, 422,519 cases and 13,837 deaths) and Chile (10th with 378,168 infections and 10,205 deaths). The United States continues to be the worst hit country with 166,038 deaths and 5,197,748 cases.

Global figures do not stop increasing and the world moves to the rhythm of the fluctuations of the pandemic, which advances, recedes and returns to places from which it had disappeared, without allowing the authorities to relax.

Italy, for example, prohibited entry to people from Colombia for fear of new infections, official sources indicated this Thursday.

In addition, those who want to enter Italy traveling from Spain, Croatia, Greece and Malta must necessarily undergo the PCR test.

Precisely in Spain, the country in Western Europe with the most contagions close to 330,000, the inhabitants of Galicia in the northwest of the country can no longer smoke in the streets and bar terraces if the safety distance is not kept.

The decision, unprecedented so far in the country and apparently in Europe, is part of a set of measures that several Spanish regions have taken in the face of the rebound in covid-19 cases.

Prolonged lockdown in Auckland?

From Greece, the worrying news of a first case of a new coronavirus arrived this Thursday in one of the overcrowded migrant camps.

The infected is a 35-year-old Yemeni man who was in the Vial camp on the island of Chíos and “was quarantined at the local hospital. Another 30 people are being tested, ”said the Greek Ministry of Migration.

On the other side of the world, New Zealand was one of the few countries that had managed to claim victory over the virus, with 102 days without locally transmitted infections until Tuesday, when the emergence of an outbreak in Auckland forced to confine the largest city in the world. country.

With 13 new cases detected as of Wednesday, all linked to the four members of a family who tested positive on Tuesday, authorities plan to extend the three-day confinement in force.

Argentina and Mexico will produce vaccine

In Latin America, Peru on Wednesday reestablished the Sunday curfew and banned family social gatherings, which became the biggest source of contagion since a gradual deconfinement began six weeks ago.

“We have to take a step back in the measures that we were releasing. As of this Sunday, mandatory immobilization will be returned to the national level, ”said President Martín Vizcarra, announcing the new measures, in a day with a record of 8,875 new infections.

The country of 32.9 million inhabitants is, with 653 deaths per million, the Latin American worst hit in proportional terms.

To counteract a bit the bad news that is multiplying in the region, a light of hope was lit on Wednesday with the announcement that Argentina and Mexico will be in charge of the production and distribution of a future vaccine against covid-19.

Argentina and Mexico will produce millions of doses for the region, with the exception of Brazil, of the future vaccine developed by the alliance of the University of Oxford with the AstraZeneca laboratory, which would be available in the first half of 2021.

Brazilian chickens in China

The new coronavirus spreads in multiple ways and appears in the most surprising places.

This Thursday, the Chinese authorities announced that they detected it in a routine control of imported chicken from Brazil, the world’s leading producer, and for the second time in prawns from Ecuador.

The virus was present in samples taken on Tuesday from frozen Brazilian chicken wings, the mayor of the Shenzhen metropolis (south), near Hong Kong, said in a statement.

In Anhui province (to the east), the Wuhu city hall announced that it had discovered the virus in shrimp packaging from Ecuador. The packages were kept in a restaurant’s freezer.

The world economy accumulates the bad news. The International Energy Agency (IEA) cut its estimate of global oil demand for 2020 and 2021 on Thursday due to the persistent fragility of the transport sector, especially air.

The demand for crude oil will fall to 91.9 million barrels per day (mbd), that is to say 140,000 barrels per day less than what was forecast until now.

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