1 CORONAVIRUS
End of the pandemic is ‘in sight’, say WHO and Biden
The end of the Covid-19 pandemic is “in sight”, the World Health Organization declared, after revealing that weekly deaths from the virus around the world were at the lowest level since March 2020, when national lockdowns began in many countries across the globe. The weekly global deaths figure on 5 September was 11,118, according to the WHO’s website.
The WHO also estimated that 19.8m deaths were averted in 2021 due to Covid-19 vaccines being administered and that 12bn doses had been given around the world.
Joe Biden also said “the pandemic is over” in an interview broadcast last Sunday, though he admitted “we still have a problem with Covid”, as the US continues to grapple with infections that kill hundreds of Americans a day.
The WHO, however, cautioned that coronavirus still posed an “acute global emergency” and highlighted that during the first eight months of 2022 more than 1 million people died from Covid-19. The director general of the international health body, Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, told a press conference: “We have never been in a better position to end the pandemic – we are not there yet, but the end is in sight.”
2 PUERTO RICO
No power or clean water in hurricane aftermath
Most of the Caribbean island was without power or safe drinking water on Monday, after Hurricane Fiona struck there a day earlier.
Hundreds of people were trapped in emergency shelters, with major roads underwater and reports of numerous collapsed bridges. Crops were washed away while flash floods, landslides and fallen trees blocked roads, swept away vehicles and caused widespread damage to infrastructure. At least three people were known to have died as of Monday.
Fiona triggered painful memories for Puerto Ricans exactly five years after hurricanes Irma and Maria made landfall two weeks apart and destroyed much of the island’s electricity infrastructure, leading to the longest blackout in US history.
