Global Covid cases top 200 million

China pledges to provide two billion vaccine doses this year to combat surging infections caused by the Delta variant.

A woman is tested at the Beijing West railway station on Thursday night. Picture: AFP

The number of Covid-19 infections recorded worldwide passed 200 million on Thursday, an Agence France-Presse count showed.

The grim milestone was posted as China pledged to provide two billion vaccine doses this year to combat surging infections caused by the Delta variant.

The more infectious strain is driving a resurgence in the pandemic, especially in the Asia-­Pacific region where Thailand, Indonesia and Japan continued to set records.

The number of daily new cases globally has jumped 68 per cent since mid-June, AFP’s tally shows.

But as more of the world gets vaccinated – particularly in wealthy countries – deaths have risen at a slower rate, up 20 per cent since July, the data show.

China will strive to deliver two billion doses of vaccines to the world this year and pledged $US100m to the Covax system for distributing jabs to the poorest countries, President Xi Jinping said in remarks reported by state broadcaster CCTV.

After months in which Beijing could boast of its success in containing infections, authorities there are again battling a rise in cases, including in Wuhan, the city of 11 million people where the first Covid-19 outbreak occurred.

In Thailand, new cases hit 20,000 for the first time on Wednesday, and then again on Thursday.

Overwhelmed mortuaries are renting refrigerated containers to store bodies, while medical and other frontline workers are exhausted.

“We’re almost at our limits,” forensic scientist Thanitchet Khetkham said. “I’ve seen our personnel faint quite a few times lately so fatigue is definitely starting to set in.”

The Philippines capital Manila returned to lockdown on Friday as authorities sought to slow the spread of Delta and ease pressure on hospitals while trying to avoid crushing economic activity.

Police checkpoints across the National Capital Region, where more than 13 million people live, caused long queues as officers in camouflage uniforms inspected vehicles to ensure only essential workers were on the road.

Experts warned that an explosion in Delta cases could overwhelm the health system if restrictions were not tightened in the crowded capital, which ­accounts for about a third of the country’s economy.

Indonesia’s total Covid death toll passed 100,000 on Wednesday after it recorded 1739 of the 10,245 fatalities registered worldwide – taking the global toll past 4.25 million.

Protesters were out again in Paris, as the country’s top constitutional body approved President Emmanuel Macron’s health pass that will restrict access to bars, eateries and intercity trains to those who have been jabbed or tested.

“All this undermines fundamental freedoms … Freedom is, first of all, the choice to be vaccinated or not,” said Marie Jose ­Libeiro, 48. “We are falling into an authoritarian state.”

But the Constitutional Court said the restrictions, as well as compulsory vaccination for health workers, represented a “balanced trade-off” between public health concerns and personal freedom.

And in French-speaking Quebec, the government said it too will introduce a vaccine passport, the first in Canada, to counter the Delta variant.

“People who have made the ­effort to get their two doses should be able to live a semi-normal life,” provincial Premier Francois Legault said.

Living at all was at the heart of the message from the head of the African Union’s health watchdog. John Nkengasong revealed that he was battling Covid-19 but had survived the worst thanks to his jabs, as he urged the continent to fight vaccine hesitancy.

Experts worry that reluctance to take the vaccine, stemming from public scepticism over foreign-procured jabs and fear of side effects, may prolong the pandemic among Africa’s 1.3 billion people. Africa also posted a record with 6400 deaths in the week to last Sunday, the continent’s most in the pandemic, the World Health Organisation said.

Dr Nkengasong, the director of the Africa Centres for Disease Control, said he had contracted the infection last week despite being fully vaccinated. “The severity of the attack is so unbearable. The headaches, fever,” the Cameroonian virologist told an online briefing. But he added that without his jabs, “I wouldn’t be here”.

AFP