The number of reported Covid-19 deaths worldwide fell for the second straight week, with 88,000 new deaths last week, down 10% from the week before, according to the WHO.
More than 3.1 million new cases of Covid-19 were reported worldwide last week, WHO said in its weekly epidemiological update. That was a drop of 17% 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 an increasing number of cases, this is encouraging on a global level,” the weekly update said.
The United States accounted for the highest number of new Covid-19 cases, with 871,365. However, according to WHO data, this figure represented a 19% drop in cases from the previous week.
Brazil, France, Russia and the United Kingdom were also among the countries reporting the highest number of new cases worldwide, the WHO noted, although they all saw a decrease compared to figures from the previous week.
Of all regions, Africa saw the largest drop in the number of cases, at 22%, compared to the previous WHO weekly update, while the Eastern Mediterranean saw the smallest at 2%.
In total, new cases in America 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 nearly 107 million cases of Covid-19 and more than 2.3 million deaths from the virus since the pandemic began, according to figures from Johns Hopkins University.
Many countries hope that vaccines against the coronavirus will provide a way out of the crisis.
But while some countries have already administered millions of doses, about 130 countries – home to about 2.5 billion people – still need to administer a single dose, WHO Director General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said in a briefing Friday.
This week’s first data showing that the Oxford AstraZeneca vaccine may provide only “minimal protection” against mild to moderate diseases caused by the coronavirus variant first identified in South Africa has lowered 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 is tipped to play a key role in fighting the low and middle income countries.