As of February 4, local time in the United States, statistics from Johns Hopkins University show that the number of deaths from new crown pneumonia in the United States has exceeded 900,000. Just 51 days ago, that number had just crossed the 800,000 mark.
At the same time, the highly contagious variant of the new coronavirus, Omiljung, may have become the virus that infected the largest number of humans at the same time in modern human history. Foreign media reports say the virus has made the world "sicker" than at any time in 100 years.
"Unprecedented": more than 84 million confirmed globally in January is comparable to the full year of 2020
According to foreign media reports on the 5th, global health experts said that the world is experiencing a "unique moment": in the past five or six weeks, the number of people affected by the Omiljung variant may be more than any similar period since the 1918-1919 influenza pandemic.
According to Oxford University's "Our World In Data" statistics, in January this year, there were more than 84 million confirmed cases of COVID-19 worldwide, almost the same number of confirmed COVID-19 cases in all of 2020.
Experts say the scale and speed of the spread of the Omiljung virus is only "comparable" to the influenza pandemic of 1918-1919.
Surveys and modelling by the Office for National Statistics show that more than one in six residents of the UK are estimated to have been infected with the virus since the emergence of Omikeron at the end of Last November. In Denmark, about one in five people is infected with the virus, and in Israel, one in nine people is infected with the virus.
According to estimates by Trevor Bedford, a virologist at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in the United States, about one in five Americans had been infected with Omicron by mid-January, and that number could double by the end of the peak in mid-February.
"Over the course of 8 weeks, about 40 percent of the population was infected with the same pathogen, which is so shocking that I can't think of a clear modern precedent." He tweeted, "The usual flu season infects about 10 percent of the population within 16 weeks." ”
"Not encountered in a hundred years": global infection with the same virus in a short period of time
Christopher Murray, director of the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME) at the University of Washington, said: "It's an incredible and unique moment for so many people to be infected with one pathogen at the same time."
On January 14, new Jersey, the epidemic caused another aggravation of the "labor shortage" in the United States, and Wal-Mart shelves were empty.
According to the report, in the previous waves of the new crown pandemic, different parts of the world have experienced a surge in cases at different times. In contrast, the current wave of outbreaks is largely global, even though parts of Asia have not yet seen a large-scale Outbreak of Omikejong.
Dr. William Schaffner, a professor of infectious diseases at Vanderbilt University School of Medicine in the United States, said that the scale and speed of the spread of the Omikejung virus, the percentage of the global population infected with the same virus in such a short period of time, only the influenza pandemic of 1918-1919 "can be compared".
In January, there were more than 84 million confirmed cases of COVID-19 worldwide. However, the real data may be even more staggering. According to estimates by the Institute for Health Indicators and Evaluation (IHME), about 95 million people worldwide may have been infected with Omiqueron every day in the days of early January, six times the previous peak, because only a small percentage of positive patients were detected.
The agency predicts that new infections will fall sharply in the coming weeks, and the global epidemic may come to an end in mid-March.
The epidemic is still at its peak, and multinational policies are "loosened" WHO: outrageous
As one of the world's "richest countries," the United States is home to a number of world-class health facilities, but despite this, the country still has the highest number of deaths in the world. Statistics from Johns Hopkins University show that the number of DEATHS from COVID-19 in the United States has exceeded 900,000. Dr. Ashish Jeha, dean of the Brown University School of Public Health, said: "This is completely astronomical. ”
Statistics from Johns Hopkins University show that the number of DEATHS from COVID-19 in the United States has exceeded 900,000.
Behind this astronomical figure, the real number of people who died directly or indirectly from the new crown virus is considered to be much higher. Jeha regrets that most of the deaths occurred after the COVID-19 vaccine was approved, "which is where the United States failed," and he and other medical professionals were disappointed by the relevant epidemic prevention policies. And because the COVID-19 pandemic is not over and the U.S. is still at its peak, Jaha estimates that by April, the death toll in the U.S. could reach 1 million.
On the other hand, due to the pressure of labor shortage, coupled with the "milder" Omicron disease, some governments have begun to "relax" epidemic prevention measures. The United States and the United Kingdom have reduced the isolation time of confirmed patients from 10 days to 5 days; Israel has announced that "close contact" students no longer need to miss school; and a number of European countries such as Denmark, France, Ireland, the Netherlands and other European countries have announced this week that they will remove many restrictions on the outbreak.
In response, WHO warns against loosening restrictions too quickly. On Tuesday, WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said: "We are concerned that in some countries there is already a narrative that preventing the spread of the virus is no longer possible or necessary due to vaccination rates, high infection rates and low mortality rates in Omilon. There's nothing more outrageous than that, and more transmission means more cases. ”
Red Star News reporter Xu Huan
Edited by Zhang Xun