liam-burnett-blue-t7xx-ko7vso-unsplash

Asia’s COVID-19 deaths surpass one million

pharmafile | March 11, 2022 | News story | Medical Communications  

A Reuters tally has revealed that Asia passed the milestone of one million coronavirus-linked deaths on Friday 11 March. A spike in Omicron variant infections spread across the region, after beginning in nations such as Japan and South Korea.

The death toll in Asia has reached 1,000,045, contributing to 16% of global deaths related to COVID-19. As it stands, new cases remain at record or near-record levels in areas such as Malaysia, Singapore, South Korea, Thailand and Vietnam, but have fallen drastically from their peaks in India, Indonesia, and the Philippines.

So far, there have been at least 124,153,000 reported COVID-19 infections and 1,368,000 reported deaths in Asia and the Middle East so far.

China, which has adopted a “dynamic zero” strategy of strict measures to curb infections, has still experienced a rapid increase in Omicron cases. Deaths have also reached new heights in the East Asian countries of Japan, South Korea, and Hong Kong.

South Korea’s daily average is 186 deaths, three times the level of its 2021 surge.

China, Singapore, and South Korea have now vaccinated over 85% of their populations with two doses. However, fewer than 40% of the population in Myanmar, Uzbekistan, and Kyrgyzstan is fully vaccinated.

In the wider Asian region, only approximately 65% of the population have received two vaccine doses.

On Friday 11 March, mainland China reported over 1,000 new local infections, which is the highest daily count since Beijing contained its first national outbreak in early 2020. This is driven largely in part by a rise in asymptomatic cases.

Lina Adams

Related Content

No items found

Latest content