Global coronavirus cases rise again due to strong outbreak in Asia

The wave of cases linked to the omicron variant on China and other East Asian countries has caused the global curve of weekly infections of coronavirus rise again, after five weeks of declines, according to the epidemiological report published by the World Health Organization (WHO).

From March 7 to 13, the WHO recorded 11.4 million new cases on the planet, 8% more than in the previous week, although the deaths, 43,000, represent a decrease of 17%.

East Asia, which for months has been one of the regions with the lowest incidence in the world due in part to the “zero covid” policy, was last week the region that reported the most cases, five million, and also where they grew the most, 29% compared to the previous week.

In Europe there was also a rise in casesalthough lower (2% to 4.9 million), while in the Americas there was a drop of 20% (887,000), in South Asia 21% (348,000) and in the Middle East 24% (126,000) .

Similarly, in East Asia deaths rose 12% to 6,600but they fell in the rest of the regions, including the worst affected in absolute terms (in Europe deaths fell by 23% to 15,000, and in America by 15% to 16,000).

The countries that reported the most infections last week were South Korea (2.1 million, an increase of 44%), Vietnam (1.6 million, an increase of 65%) and Germany (1.3 million, an increase of 22%). plus).

Cumulatively since the start of the pandemic, covid has caused 458 million infections (equivalent to more than 5% of the world population) and more than six million deaths.

The rebound of the pandemic when more than 10 million weekly cases are still recorded occurs when the current wave had not dropped to the figures prior to the appearance of the omicron variantsince before this there was an average of only four million infections in the world per week.

The who It also warns that the current figures could be much lower than those of the real cases, since many countries, given the predominance of mild cases due to the omicron variant, have considerably reduced the tests they carry out.

The United States, for example, is no longer listed as before among the countries with the most confirmed weekly cases.despite the fact that it continues to be the one with the most deaths (9,000 last week, which represented a decrease of 13%).

The omicron variant, according to the WHO, already accounts for 99.9% of the cases analyzed in laboratories (Only 400 of the 430,000 tests in recent days corresponded to the delta, which was dominant for much of 2021).

The who It also noted in its weekly epidemiological report that no circulation of the lambda (first detected in Peru) and mu (in Colombia) variants has been detected in the last 90 days, for which it has designated them “previously circulating variants.”

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