The World Health Organization's top emergency expert Mike Ryan said today that global deaths from COVID-19 are expected to top 100,000 per week "very soon", from more than 93,000 reported last week.
In an epidemiological update provided to the WHO's executive board meeting, Ryan noted that the Americas region accounted for about 47 percent of current deaths.
"In Europe, cases and deaths are stabilizing but at a high level," he added.
"Currently our epidemiological situation is dynamic and uneven, it's further complicated by variants," he told the board.
[caption id="attachment_203426" align="aligncenter" width="281"] Ryan[/caption]
On another hand, Ryan said that the impact of new variants of COVID-19 in places like Britain, South Africa and Brazil remains to be seen, citing human behavior for some recent rises in infection counts.
“It’s just too easy to lay the blame on the variant and say, ‘It’s the virus that did it,’” Dr. Michael Ryan told reporters. “Well unfortunately, it’s also what we didn’t do that did it.”