▲ The population of Beijing will undergo three rounds of PCR tests. The image, in the Economic-Technological Development Zone of the Chinese capital.Xinhua photo
Reuters, Afp and Sputnik
Newspaper La Jornada
Wednesday, April 27, 2022, p. fifteen
Geneva. The director of the World Health Organization (WHO), Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, yesterday urged countries to maintain surveillance of coronavirus infections, and stated that we are blind
in the face of the spread of the virus due to decreased testing rates. As many countries scale back testing, WHO receives less and less information on transmission and sequencing
he asserted.
He indicated that the WHO recorded last week the lowest weekly death toll since March 2020, of just over 15 thousand deaths
. Ghebreyesus cautioned, however, that caution must prevail. He added that the coronavirus it will not disappear just because countries stop looking for it
because it is still spreading, changing and killing.
Authorities in Beijing have erected fences and launched a massive testing campaign for almost all of its 21 million people, as fears grow that the Chinese capital will end a harsh lockdown like Shanghai.
The outbreak in the economic capital caused 52 new deaths yesterday, while Beijing ordered its population to undergo three rounds of PCR tests after detecting 33 new cases yesterday. Shanghai, for its part, had 16,000 new infections.
As of February of this year, 58 percent of the US population, more than 190 million people, have contracted covid-19, according to a study by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention published yesterday. The figure far exceeds 80 million official infections, with most cases undiagnosed, asymptomatic or unreported.
About 75 percent of those under the age of 18 were infected, according to the report based on a nationwide representative study of antibody levels. There was a large increase in cases during the omicron wave in the winter, particularly among children.
Despite the increase in hospitalizations, there is a marked decrease in the number of deaths in the United States, due to the increasing immunity among the population and because the new variants are less severe. There are currently 300 deaths a day on average, and the country is expected to reach one million deaths in the coming weeks.
The vice president of the United States, Kamala Harris, tested positive yesterday for covid-19, but is asymptomatic.
The pandemic has left 510 million 638 thousand 728 infected and 6 million 224 thousand 338 dead, according to Johns Hopkins University.
