GENEVA, Jan 18 (NNN-AGENCIES) — The overall number of confirmed coronavirus cases worldwide has exceeded 325 million and the number of fatalities has exceeded 5.53 million, the World Health Organization (WHO) said.
As on Monday Jan 17, as many as 326,279,424 novel coronavirus cases and 5,536,609 coronavirus-associated deaths were registered across the globe. The number of confirmed cases grew by 2,669,054 over the past day and the number of fatalities increased by 6,916.
The WHO statistics is based on officially confirmed data from the countries.
The biggest number of coronavirus cases was reported from the United States (64,720,612), India (37,380,253), Brazil (22,975,723), the United Kingdom (15,217,284), and France (13,819,182).
The biggest number of fatalities was reported from the United States (843,718), Brazil (620,971), India (486,451), Russia (321,990), and Mexico (301,334).
Meanwhile, UN chief Antonio Guterres told the all-virtual DAVOS FORUM on Monday that the world must vaccinate everybody against Covid-19 to ensure a way out of the pandemic.
The face-to-face gathering of political and corporate power players in the Swiss Alps is online for the second year in a row due to a pandemic that shows no sign of abating.
“The last two years have demonstrated a simple but brutal truth — if we leave anyone behind, we leave everyone behind,” said the United Nations Secretary-General.
“If we fail to vaccinate every person, we give rise to new variants that spread across borders and bring daily life and economies to a grinding halt.”
Guterres said the international community needs to “confront the pandemic with equity and fairness.”
He noted that the World Health Organization unveiled a strategy last autumn to vaccinate 40 per cent of the planet’s population by the end of 2021 and 70 per cent by the middle of this year.
“We are nowhere near these targets,” Guterres told the World Economic Forum.
“Vaccination rates in high-income countries are, shamefully, seven times higher than in African countries. We need vaccine equity, now,” he added.
Guterres said pharmaceutical companies should “stand in solidarity with developing countries by sharing licenses, know-how and technology so we can all find a way out of this pandemic.”
