The U.N. health agency said there were more than 14,000
COVID-19 deaths in the last week and nearly 7 million new infections. The
Western Pacific reported a 30% jump in cases while Africa reported a 46% drop.
Cases also fell by more than 20% in the Americas and the Middle East.
The number of new deaths rose by 19% in the Middle East,
while dropping by more than 70% in Africa, 15% in Europe and 10% in the
Americas.
The WHO said that the omicron subvariant BA.5 remains
dominant globally, accounting for nearly 70% of all virus sequences shared with
the world’s biggest publicly available virus database. The agency said other
omicron subvariants, including BA.4 and BA.2, appear to be decreasing in
prevalence as BA.5 takes over.
The WHO cautioned that its assessment of COVID-19 trends
remains compromised by countries dropping many of their testing, surveillance
and sequencing efforts as most countries have relaxed pandemic controls.
Still, Chinese authorities have announced new restrictions
this week, after finding COVID-19 cases in the tourist island of Hainan and in
Tibet. Earlier this week, the Chinese government shut down Lhasa’s Potala
Palace, the traditional home of the Dalai Lama, and also locked down Haikou,
the capital of Hainan, in addition to several other cities including the beach
resort Sanya.
About 80,000 tourists were stranded this week in Sanya after
Chinese officials declared it a COVID-19 hot spot and required people to test
negative five times within a week before being allowed to leave.
On Tuesday, the Chinese government sent a first planeload of
125 tourists out of Sanya and said other flights would be organized to fly out
tourists in batches once they fulfilled the criteria to leave. -AP
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