In its weekly report on the pandemic issued late Tuesday,
WHO said COVID-19 deaths in all regions other than Europe remained stable or
declined, and totaled 50,000 worldwide last week. Of the 3.3 million new
infections reported, 2.1 million came from Europe.
It was the seventh consecutive week that COVID-19 cases
continued to mount across the 61 countries and territories that WHO counts in
its European region, which stretches through Russia to Central Asia.
While about 60% of people in Western Europe are fully
immunized against COVID-19, only about half as many are vaccinated in the
eastern part of the continent, where officials are struggling to overcome
widespread vaccine hesitancy.
WHO said infections have been falling in Africa, the Middle
East and Southeast Asia since July.
Within Europe, WHO said the highest numbers of new cases
were in Russia, Germany and Britain. It noted that deaths jumped by 67% in
Norway and by 38% in Slovakia.
The health agency previously described Europe as the
epicenter of the ongoing pandemic and warned that there could be 500,000 more
deaths by February if urgent actions aren’t taken on the continent.
In the last week, Austria has put tight restrictions on the
movement of unvaccinated people, the Netherlands and some other European
countries have reintroduced lockdown measures to try to slow infections, and
the U.K. decided to roll out booster doses to everyone over 40. -AP
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