There has been growing evidence that vaccine protection against infection wanes over time, especially in light of the highly transmissible delta variant. However, questions remain about the need for healthy young Americans to get booster shots when half the world has not been inoculated because of vaccine scarcity, and about 50 countries have a vaccination rate below 10%.
Almost twice as many worldwide cases of COVID-19 have been reported already in 2021 as in all of 2020, a USA TODAY analysis of Johns Hopkins University data shows.
Of the nearly 251 million global coronavirus infections throughout a pandemic that began early last year, about 167 million have been recorded in 2021, after 84 million in 2020.
Deaths have followed a similar pattern, though not quite as dramatic, in large part because of the development of vaccines. After the virus killed at least 1.88 million people in 2020, it has claimed about 3.18 million lives this year. Much of the world has limited access to testing, and evidence suggests both cases and deaths are dramatically undercounted.
Among the countries with large case counts that have increased from one year to the next: The U.S. has gone from 20.2 million to 26.5 million; India from 10.3 million to 24.1 million; and Brazil from 7.7 million to 14.2 million.
The increase in infections is striking in light of the arrival of vaccines, initially in limited supplies in December 2020 but later more widespread in wealthy countries like the U.S. and much of Europe. That's a testament of the high transmissibility of the delta variant, which raged throughout this past summer.
-- Mike Stucka
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