GENEVA : According to the latestdata from the World Health Organization (WHO), the number of Covid-19 cases worldwide has topped 600 million, a sobering milestone in the epidemic that is still going strong despite having started in early 2020. The total number of cases was 600,555,262 as of Friday morning, with a total of 6,472,914 deaths.

The US is the nation most severely affected by Covid, with 93,216,822 cases and 1,034,719 deaths, respectively. Brazil comes in second with 34,414,011 cases, followed by India in second place with 44,436,339 cases. With 683,851 deaths, Brazil comes in second position, and India is third with 527,911 fatalities.

Europe and the Americas have so far recorded more than 248 million and 175 million confirmed cases, as well as 2,077,355 and 2,817,530 deaths, respectively, according to WHO regional offices. Together, the two regions are responsible for more than 70% of all confirmed cases and more than 75% of all fatalities globally.

WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said last week that the world had reached "the tragic milestone of one million reported deaths so far this year," despite the fact that the weekly numbers of new Covid-19 cases and fatalities have continued to decline.

When one million people have died from Covid-19 this year alone, when the epidemic has been going on for two and a half years, and when we have the means to stop these deaths, we cannot claim that we are learning to live with Covid. The WHO has urged all nations, regardless of their level of affluence, to immunise people who are most at risk and to guarantee access to life-saving care while continuing to test and sequence the virus.

Omicron remains the dominant variant, with the BA.5 sub-variant representing more than 90 percent of sequences shared with the WHO. It is challenging to discern how the virus might be evolving, though, given that the quantity of sequences transmitted each week has decreased by 90% and the number of nations sharing sequences has decreased by 75% since the start of this year.

Tedros has issued a warning that a rise in hospitalizations and deaths from Covid-19 can be anticipated in the upcoming months as colder weather moves in to the northern hemisphere.

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