LONDON (AP) — New coronavirus cases fell 9% worldwide last week, while deaths remained stable, according to the latest weekly assessment of the pandemic released by the World Health Organization on Wednesday.
The UN health agency said 6.5 million cases were reported last week with more than 14,000 deaths. The WHO said the number of new cases in Europe has fallen by 35%, but has increased by about 20% in the Western Pacific and 5% in Africa. Deaths increased by 44% in the western Pacific and by 26% in the Middle East, while the number in Europe fell by about a quarter.
The WHO has previously warned that recent surveillance of COVID-19 has been severely compromised by countries that have reduced their testing, reporting and other coronavirus warning systems. The agency has said the COVID-19 figures are likely to be significantly underestimated, which could make it more difficult to discover worrying new variants.
In the UK, the Office for National Statistics reported last week that the number of COVID-19 cases has fallen to about 1 in 20 people in England who are infected, suggesting the latest wave of the coronavirus may have peaked in the UK. country.
dr. Paul Hunter, a professor of medicine at the University of East Anglia, said it is likely that COVID-19 cases and hospital admissions will fall further in the coming weeks.
Other experts warned that measures still need to be taken to prevent COVID-19 as the health system continues to be under strain.
“We have to hope that the incidence of long-term COVID from this wave will be lower than in the first and second wave,” said James Naismith, director of the Rosalind Franklin Institute at the University of Oxford. He called on people to continue vaccinating even if COVID-19 protocols were abandoned, citing the dangers of reinfection.
Meanwhile, authorities in China last week shut down part of Wuhan, the city where COVID-19 was first detected in late 2019, after identifying four cases. The government has suggested that its “zero COVID” strategy could take years, despite the social and economic upheaval the approach has caused.
The WHO said in its report that two versions of omicron — sub-variants BA.5 and BA.4 — were responsible for the latest wave of infections around the world. It said BA.5 accounted for about 64% to 70% of the sequences shared with the world’s largest public viral database.
The highest number of new cases were reported in Japan, the US, South Korea, Germany and Italy. Most deaths were reported in the US, Brazil, Italy, Japan and Australia.
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