India registered for the first time more than 4 thousand deaths from coronavirus in 24 hours, health authorities reported. The virulence of the pandemic has subdued the fragile health system of this country of 1.3 billion inhabitants, which reached a daily record with 4,197 deaths, and registered 401,78 new cases, according to official data.
It accumulates 238,270 deaths and 21.9 million infections, figures that are rising rapidly in contradiction of the downward trend in the rest of the world.
Faced with such a scenario, a week-long lockdown began yesterday in the state of Kerala. In the southern states of Karnataka and Tamil Nadu, it will rule two. With more than 300 thousand positive cases, Bangalore, the capital of Karnataka and known as the Indian Silicon Valley, is the city with the most active infections and experts warn that the worst is yet to come, since the third largest city in the country has hospitals and saturated crematoria.
The Narendra Modi government has not yet imposed a national lockdown, but half of the states have decreed a total closure. The United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) stressed that “this wave, which is almost four times the size of the first,” is leaving many young people and children destitute and orphaned. “On average, there were more than four new cases per second and more than two deaths per minute in 24 hours,” said the UNICEF representative in India, Yasmin Ali Haque.
The catastrophe has spread to neighboring countries, such as Bangladesh, Nepal and Sri Lanka, which have closed their borders with India, while Pakistan imposed nine days of confinement despite the Muslim holiday of the end of the fast.
At a time when deaths reach 3.27 million globally, and vaccination campaigns are progressing unevenly, but infections have declined in Europe, the United States, Canada and Latin America.
In Honduras, seven opposition mayors implored the president of El Salvador, Nayib Bukele, to give them vaccines because their “population is dying” and the “government does not respond.”
With about 10 million inhabitants, Honduras has received 248,600 doses, while El Salvador, with 6.5 million inhabitants, is the country in the region with the highest rate of vaccination. Chile registered for the third consecutive day more than 6,200 confirmed cases during the day on Friday, despite the fact that more than 7 million of its 19 million inhabitants are immunized.
Cuba will begin to inoculate its population this month.
The president of Brazil, Jair Bolsonaro, once again criticized the parliamentary commission investigating the management of the pandemic, stating that “they only talk about chloroquine,” used against the virus in the country, despite the fact that its effectiveness is not is proven.
Europeans will be able to travel outside of their countries this summer if Covid-19 cases continue to decline on the continent, said German Chancellor Angela Merkel.
The European Union signed an agreement with Pfizer and BioNTech to purchase 1.8 billion vaccines, announced the president of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen. The pandemic has left the world with 157 million 216 thousand 398 cases and 3 million 277 thousand 197 deaths, according to Johns Hopkins University.