Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) | July 1, 2021
Read the PublicationAlthough COVID-19 cases are declining rapidly in the US, they have reached record highs in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs). The nucleus of the pandemic has shifted decidedly to the global south. The South-East Asia region and Latin America now represent 75% of global weekly deaths. On June 22, the Latin America region reported more than 1 million weekly new cases and 30 000 new deaths. Latin America has the highest deaths per capita, where deaths in countries such as Brazil, Argentina, Mexico, and Peru have reached 177 to 564 per hundred thousand. The Africa region has had increasing numbers of cases, with Uganda and Zambia experiencing 10,000 and 17,000 new weekly cases, respectively. Increasingly, the pandemic is where the vaccines are not.