According to an AFP count based on official sources shortly before 1500 GMT, Europe became the world’s first region on Thursday to cross the milestone of 500,000 coronavirus deaths.
There were at least 500,069 deaths in the 52 countries and territories of the European region, ahead of 477,404 in Latin America and the Caribbean, the United States and Canada (321,287), Asia (208,149), the Middle East (85,895), and Africa (85895) (57,423).
After having already been the subject of global concern in March-April, Europe has once again been the apex of the disease outbreak since October — alongside the United States.
Over the past seven days, almost 37,000 people in Europe have died, the largest weekly toll since the beginning of the pandemic.6,800 deaths were reported in 24 hours on Tuesday, the highest-ever number.
More than half of the deaths in Europe are accounted for by five countries: Italy (66,537 deaths), the United Kingdom (65,520), France (59,361), Russia (49,151), and Spain (65520) (48,596).
With 158 deaths per 100,000 people, Belgium remains the country with the highest number of deaths in relation to its population, followed by Italy (110), Bosnia-Herzegovina (107), Slovenia, and Northern Macedonia (105).
Italy (4,798 deaths), Russia (3,846), Germany (3,495), the United Kingdom (2,954), Poland (2,754), and France are the countries in Europe with the newest deaths over the past seven days (2,713). Europe has also been the area with the newest contamination every day since the start of December.
On record, more than 243,000 new infections a day were recorded there last week — nearly a third of all cases in the world.
The spread now appears to be slowing, however, the average number of new daily cases is nearly constant relative to the previous week.
Vaccines Conditions In Europe
The grim marker in Europe comes the day after the World Health Organization (WHO) cautioned at the beginning of 2021 of a “high risk” of a resurgence in the area.
At least 1.65 million people were killed from Covid-19 worldwide and according to AFP’s count, more than 74 million cases have been identified.
Europe’s drug watchdog said on Thursday it expects to obtain “in the coming days” the first request for conditional marketing approval of the COVID-19 vaccine, the first move to make a shot available outside the United States.
The European Medicines Agency (EMA) has not identified the firm it expects to file the application, but Pfizer Inc and BioNTEch are among the three companies that have released late-stage trial data for their vaccines, the most advanced in the regulatory phase.
