South America has emerged as the world's hardest-hit region by the pandemic, suffering about one-third of all global COVID deaths despite accounting for less than 6 percent of its population. A slow vaccine rollout in some larger countries such as Brazil is part of the problem, though as a whole the region is still inoculating people faster than Asia, where the mortality rates are much lower. The situation in South America is so dire that the World Health Organization recently called for wealthy nations to prioritize donating vaccines to South American countries, rather than to the global COVAX facility. We take a look at global COVID death rates per 1 million people and vaccination levels.
