Medical staff help a patient with breathing problems towards an ambulance as he is being shifted to a hospital, amidst the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic, Ahmedabad, India, April 14, 2021. [Photo/Agencies]
With coronavirus infections surging deeper into record territory, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi is facing growing pressure to impose a harsh nationwide lockdown amid criticism that restrictions imposed by individual states are not enough.
Many medical experts, opposition leaders and some Supreme Court judges have suggested that a lockdown seems to be the only option with the virus raging in cities and towns, where hospitals are forced to turn patients away while relatives scramble to find oxygen. Crematoriums and burial grounds are struggling to handle the dead.
Coronavirus variants: What we know so far cnn.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from cnn.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
Have Over 343,000 More Americans Died From COVID? A memorial and vigil for victims of COVID-19 held in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, in early March. Photo: Aimee Dilger/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images
According to a new analysis by the University of Washington’s Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation, the coronavirus pandemic may have already killed 905,000 people in the U.S. as of May 3. That is 61 percent higher than the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s official estimated count of deaths attributed to COVID-19 up to about that date, which is nearly 561,600. The IHME’s estimate for the total number of global deaths, meanwhile, is more than double the official count: 6.93 million people, rather than 3.24 million and it predicts that 2.5 million more will die of COVID-19 around the world by September, including an additional 44,000 in the U.S.
The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said this week it had designated a coronavirus variant first seen in India as a variant of interest, adding it to the growing collection of viral variants it s keeping an eye on.
Vaccine makers are so worried about the chance new variants will escape the protection offered by immunization that they are already testing booster shots and tweaking their vaccine formulas to specifically target some of the more troubling variants.
And doctors around the world are warning that even more variants will arise as the virus continues to evolve inside the bodies of the tens of millions of people it is infecting.
Here’s what known about the coronavirus variants
The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said this week it had designated a coronavirus variant first seen in India as a “variant of interest,” adding it to the growing collection of viral variants it’s keeping an eye on.
Vaccine makers are so worried about the chance new variants will escape the protection offered by immunization that they are already testing booster shots and tweaking their vaccine formulas to specifically target some of the more troubling variants.
And doctors around the world are warning that even more variants will arise as the virus continues to evolve inside the bodies of the tens of millions of people it is infecting.