The number of reported Covid-19 deaths worldwide has declined for the second consecutive week, with 88,000 new deaths reported last week, a 10% drop from the previous week, according to the WHO.
More than 3.1 million new cases of Covid-19 were reported worldwide last week, the WHO said in its weekly epidemiological update. This was a 17% drop from the previous week and the lowest number of cases worldwide since the week of October 26, 2020.
“While there are still many countries with increasing numbers of cases globally, this is encouraging,” said the weekly update.
The United States was responsible for the largest number of new Covid-19 cases, with 871,365. However, this figure represented a 19% decline in the previous week’s cases, according to WHO data.
Brazil, France, Russia and the United Kingdom were also among the nations that reported the highest number of new cases worldwide, the WHO noted, although they all saw a reduction from the previous week’s figures.
Of all regions, compared to the previous WHO weekly update, Africa saw the largest decline in cases, with 22%, while the Eastern Mediterranean saw the smallest, with 2%.
Overall, new cases in the Americas accounted for more than half of all new cases worldwide, with more than 1.5 million new cases and more than 45,000 new deaths.
Globally, there have been almost 107 million cases of Covid-19 and more than 2.3 million deaths from the virus since the beginning of the pandemic, according to data from Johns Hopkins University.
Many countries hope that coronavirus vaccines will offer a way out of the crisis.
But while some countries have already administered millions of doses, some 130 countries – where about 2.5 billion people live – have not yet administered a single dose, said WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus in an interview on Friday.
This week’s first data showing that the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine can provide only “minimal protection” against mild to moderate diseases caused by the coronavirus variant first identified in South Africa has dampened optimism in some quarters.
The Oxford / AstraZeneca vaccine is cheaper and easier to transport and store than some of the other vaccines approved for use to date and, as such, has been considered a key role in combating the pandemic in low and middle income countries.