COVID-19 infections have continued to rise globally for more than a month now, with over four million cases reported in the past week alone, the World Health Organisation has said.
The UN health agency, in its latest update yesterday, attributed the uptick to “substantial” caseload increases of 33 per cent in the Western Pacific and 37 per cent in the Eastern Mediterranean – where coronavirus fatalities also rose 48 and 31 per cent, respectively.
The number of deaths in the four remaining WHO regions of Africa, Americas, Europe and South-East Asia was in keeping with previous weeks, apart from the Americas, which dropped 29 per cent.
Africa and Europe witnessed a two per cent decrease in COVID-19 deaths, while South-East Asia registered a three per cent increase.
Overall, the total number of reported cases is around 197 million and with 4.2 million deaths worldwide. Ranked by country, the United States topped the number of new infections over the past week, with 543,420 new cases, a nine per cent jump, followed by India, which had 283,923 new cases and a seven per cent increase.
Indonesia had 273,891 new cases, followed by Brazil’s 247,830 and Iran’s 206,722 new infections.
While Alpha variant infections have been reported in 182 countries, the Delta variant has been confirmed in three new countries, infecting a total of 135 nations.
