Covid infections drop 16% worldwide
In its latest update on the Covid-19 pandemic, the World Health Organization (WHO) said that although the number of global infections fell by 16 percent in a week — 500,000 fewer cases — regions, including Europe, are still in the grip of the virus whose variants are spreading.
The number of coronavirus deaths also declined in all regions by 10 percent over the same period, with 81,000 fatalities reported in the last week, the UN health agency said in its weekly epidemiological update.
This brings the overall number of people who died from Covid-19 to more than 2.3 million, according to WHO.
Moreover, there were 2.7 million cases of new coronavirus infections last week, bringing that total number to just over 108 million.
Five-out-of-six regions reported a double-digit percentage drop in the number of new cases, with Russia recording an 11 percent decrease, the United States a 23 percent drop and the United Kingdom a 27 percent fall.
Only infections in the Eastern Mediterranean region increased, by seven percent.
The UN health agency data, which is gathered from its global membership, also said that the European and Americas regions continue to see the greatest drops in absolute numbers of Covid-19 cases.
In some European countries, this is “likely (owing) to a strong combination of public health and social measures,” the UN agency said, before cautioning that the majority of European nations continue to experience “high or increasing” infection rates among older age groups “and/or high death rates.”