GLOBAL COVID-19 DEATHS FELL 20% IN THE LAST WEEK, SAYS WHO

GENEVA: Deaths from Covid-19 across the world have dropped by 20% in the past week compared with the week before it, according to the World Health Organization (WHO), reflecting a wider global trend as vaccine rollouts bring down hospitalisations in some of the world’s worst-hit regions, particularly in the United States and Europe.

“The number of new deaths also continued to fall for the past three weeks, with nearly 66,000 new deaths reported last week, a 20% decline as compared to the previous week. A total of four out of six WHO regions reported declines in new cases, with only South-east Asia and the Eastern Mediterranean regions showing a small 2% and 7% increase, respectively. The Americas continue to see the greatest drops in absolute numbers of cases,” the WHO said in a statement on Tuesday.

New infections, meanwhile, continued to drop for the sixth consecutive week, the global health body said. “The number of global new cases reported continues to fall for the sixth consecutive week, with 2.4 million new cases last week, a 11% decline compared to the previous week,” it said.

The total number of confirmed Covid infections stands at 112 million across the world, while more than 2.45 million people have lost their lives to the outbreak since it was first reported in the Chinese city of Wuhan in late 2019.