New coronavirus cases fell 9% globally last week while deaths remained stable, according to the latest weekly assessment of the pandemic released Wednesday by the World Health Organization.
The U.N. health agency said there were 6.5 million cases
reported last week with more than 14,000 deaths. WHO said the number of new
cases fell 35% in Europe but increased about 20% in the Western Pacific and 5%
in Africa. Deaths rose 44% in the Western Pacific and 26% in the Middle East,
while falling about a quarter in Europe.
WHO has previously warned that recent surveillance of
COVID-19 has been severely compromised by countries reducing their testing,
reporting and other coronavirus alert systems. The agency has said COVID-19
figures are likely being significantly underestimated, which could make it more
difficult to spot any worrisome new variants.
In the U.K., the Office for National Statistics reported
last week that COVID-19 cases dropped to about 1 in 20 people in England
infected, suggesting that the latest wave of the coronavirus may have peaked in
the country.
Dr. Paul Hunter, a professor of medicine at the University
of East Anglia, said it was likely that COVID-19 cases and hospitalizations would
continue to fall further in the following weeks.
Other experts warned that measures to prevent COVID-19
should still be taken, saying the health system was still under pressure.
“We have to hope that the incidence of long COVID from this
wave will be lower than in the first and second waves,” said James Naismith,
director of the Rosalind Franklin Institute at the University of Oxford. He
called for people to keep getting vaccinated even as COVID-19 protocols were
abandoned, citing the dangers of reinfection.
In China, meanwhile, authorities 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 its “zero COVID” strategy
could last for years, despite the social and economic upheaval the approach has
caused.
WHO said in its report that two versions of omicron —
subvariants BA.5 and BA.4 — were driving the latest wave of infections across
the globe. It said BA.5 accounted for about 64% to 70% of sequences shared with
the world’s largest public viral database.
The highest numbers of new cases were reported in Japan, the
U.S., South Korea, Germany and Italy. The most deaths were reported in the
U.S., Brazil, Italy, Japan and Australia.
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