In its weekly report on the pandemic issued late Tuesday,
the U.N. health agency also said that deaths fell by 10%, continuing a drop in
fatalities first seen last week. WHO said there were more than 10 million new
cases and about 60,000 deaths globally. The Western Pacific was the only region
where COVID-19 increased, with about a third more infections than the previous
week. Deaths rose by 22% in the Western Pacific and about 4% in the Middle
East, while declining everywhere else.
WHO said the omicron variant remains overwhelmingly dominant
worldwide; among virus sequences shared with the world’s largest publicly
accessible database, more than 99.5% were omicron while only 0.3% were delta.
In the last month, none of the other worrying variants — including beta, gamma,
lambda or mu — have been reported, although WHO said there were surveillance
challenges in many countries.
Numerous countries across Europe including Britain, Sweden
and Denmark, have released nearly all their COVID-19 restrictions as cases have
fallen dramatically while immunization campaigns have progressed. In the U.S.,
scientists have estimated about 73% of the population is now immune to omicron
and that any future spikes of disease will require far less disruptive
interventions to control epidemics.
Still, WHO has repeatedly said it is too early to declare
the pandemic over and warned that if the coronavirus is allowed to continue
spreading, it will have further chances to mutate into a potentially more
deadly or transmissible version.
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