BRASILIA (Reuters) – More than 1 million people died of COVID-19 in North and South America, the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO) said on Wednesday.
In the past week alone, an additional 2 million cases have been reported in the Americas, with the United States the main cause of the outbreak, said the WHO regional agency. Globally, there were more than 100 million cases and 2.1 million deaths with 44 million cases in North and South America, according to a Reuters count.
Across North America, there is increasing pressure on hospital capacity, and in some U.S. states, nearly 80% of ICU beds are being used to treat patients with COVID-19, said PAHO chief Carissa Etienne, in a virtual briefing.
Similar rates are seen in many states in Mexico, where the number of cases is tripling in some regions, she warned.
The hospital situation in Brazil is particularly worrying, with three quarters of the ICU beds occupied in many Brazilian states, she said.
In Manaus, many patients await beds in hospitals that collapsed under the strain of a second wave of coronavirus infections complicated by a new variant of the virus detected there.
Variants that have emerged in or outside the region have been detected in 14 countries in North and South America, PAHO said.
Only a few cases of British and South African mutations have been found, mainly in travelers, and they do not appear to be spreading in the region, according to PAHO, but the Amazonian variant that appeared in the Brazilian city of Manaus appears. to have a high transmission rate.
PAHO expects that the distribution of COVID-19 vaccines made available to the poorest countries through the UN-led COVAX facility will begin in March, with approximately 164 million doses.
The installation of COVAX is expected to implant 2 billion doses worldwide.
Anthony Boadle reporting; Editing by Lisa Shumaker