■ PA­HO da­ta shows COVID-19 cas­es con­tin­ue to rise in North Amer­i­ca, dri­ven by the Unit­ed States. Omi­cron vari­ant has now been re­port­ed in 19 coun­tries and ter­ri­to­ries ■

Wash­ing­ton, D.C. (PA­HO) — The Re­gion of the Amer­i­c­as has now sur­passed 100 mil­lion cas­es of COVID-19, the lat­est Pan Amer­i­can Health Or­ga­ni­za­tion (PA­HO) epi­demi­o­log­i­cal da­ta show, with the Unit­ed States dri­ving a 36% in­crease in cas­es in North Amer­i­ca in the past week and parts of Cen­tral and South Amer­i­ca re­port­ing de­clines.

South Amer­i­ca is show­ing an over­all case drop of 10.7% and a 6.3% de­crease in deaths, PA­HO’s epi­demi­ol­o­gists not­ed. How­ev­er, Bo­livia re­port­ed a sharp in­crease in cas­es, while cas­es al­so rose in Ar­genti­na and Ecuador.

In Cen­tral Amer­i­ca, coun­tries con­tin­ued to see a down­ward trend in cas­es, with a 10.8% drop.

In the Caribbean, the PA­HO analy­sis showed cas­es in­creased by 16%. Trinidad and To­ba­go con­tin­ues to re­port an in­crease in cas­es, and while Bar­ba­dos and the Cay­man Is­lands have re­port­ed large num­bers of cas­es, these are now de­creas­ing.

The Omi­cron vari­ant has now been re­port­ed in 19 coun­tries and ter­ri­to­ries of the Amer­i­c­as: Ar­genti­na, Bermu­da, Brazil, Cana­da, Cay­man Is­lands, Chile, Colom­bia, Cos­ta Ri­ca, Cu­ba, Ecuador, French Guiana, Guade­loupe, Mex­i­co, Pana­ma, Pe­ru, Puer­to Ri­co, Saint Mar­tin, Trinidad and To­ba­go and the Unit­ed States of Amer­i­ca, where the Omi­cron vari­ant is es­ti­mat­ed to ac­count for 73% of SARS-CoV-2 virus se­quences in the past week.

PA­HO con­tin­ues to rec­om­mend vac­ci­na­tion and pub­lic health mea­sures to re­duce the risk of ex­po­sure to COVID-19 and halt the trans­mis­sion of the virus. These in­clude wear­ing masks, main­tain­ing phys­i­cal dis­tance from oth­ers, fre­quent hand wash­ing, and avoid­ing crowd­ed spaces, es­pe­cial­ly in­doors.

“These mea­sures are ef­fec­tive against all vari­ants, in­clud­ing Omi­cron,” PA­HO Di­rec­tor Caris­sa F. Eti­enne said re­cent­ly. “Coun­tries should sus­tain their pub­lic health mea­sures to lim­it trans­mis­sion of the virus and ad­just them ac­cord­ing to lo­cal trans­mis­sion risks,” she added.

In terms of COVID-19 vac­cine dis­tri­b­u­tion, over 868 mil­lion dos­es have been ad­min­is­tered in Latin Amer­i­ca and the Caribbean. To date, about 57.3% of the pop­u­la­tion in Latin Amer­i­ca and the Caribbean has com­plet­ed their COVID-19 vac­ci­na­tion sched­ules.

PA­HO projects that most coun­tries in the re­gion will have reached or sur­passed the WHO tar­get of vac­ci­nat­ing 40% of their el­i­gi­ble pop­u­la­tions by the end of 2021. The cur­rent es­ti­mates are that Haiti, Ja­maica, Saint Vin­cent and the Grenadines, Guatemala, Saint Lu­cia, and Grena­da may not at­tain that 40% cov­er­age goal.

So far, over 75 mil­lion dos­es of vac­cines have been de­liv­ered to 33 coun­tries in the Re­gion through the CO­V­AX mech­a­nism, in­clud­ing 22 mil­lion do­nat­ed dos­es. PA­HO’s Re­volv­ing Fund has han­dled the lo­gis­tics for these de­liv­er­ies and is work­ing with coun­tries to pur­chase vac­cines di­rect­ly from man­u­fac­tur­ers.