Covid-19: Infections and deaths fall by about 20% globally

The number of cases of covid-19 fell by 21% globally in the last week, to 4.5 million, and 15,000 deaths from the disease were also recorded, a drop of 20% in the same period, according to the report released today by the WHO.

According to the World Health Organization document, positive cases detected between April 18th and 24th represent the lowest weekly number in the last four months and mean that infections have returned to the numbers prior to the wave of the Ómicron variant, which reached more than 20 million cases per week in January.

As for declines, a rapid downward trend has been observed since February, and the weekly number is the lowest since the beginning of March 2020, the month in which SARS-CoV-2 was declared a pandemic by the WHO.

However, the WHO urged that these statistics, reflected in its weekly epidemiological report, be analysed with caution, especially those related to the number of cases, as many countries have drastically reduced testing given the increase in mild and asymptomatic infections.

A total of 99.7% of the cases analysed in the laboratory in the last 30 days were linked to the Ómicron variant, dominant in the world since the end of 2021, and normally associated with milder forms of covid-19, although the WHO remains alert to the possibility that the new coronavirus could evolve into more dangerous mutations.

"We recommend maintaining strong surveillance of the SARS-CoV-2 virus during the remainder of the acute phase of the pandemic," the Geneva-based organization said in the report.

Geographically, Europe was the region that detected the most cases last week (2.2 million), although these showed a decrease of 28% compared to the previous seven days, while in East Asia and the Pacific there were 1.4 million cases , a drop of 28% after weeks of being the region most affected by the pandemic.

The Americas recorded 550,000 cases (9% increase), South Asia 161,000 (6% decrease), Africa 36,000 (32% increase), and the Middle East 22,000 (30% decrease).

The highest number of deaths was recorded on the European continent (6,800, although with a drop of 23%), while in America 4,029 deaths were recorded, representing a drop of 19%.

Since the beginning of the pandemic, more than two years ago, one of the most serious of the last century, 508 million cases and 6.2 million deaths have been detected worldwide.

The health crisis has led to the administration of more than 11,000 million doses of the vaccine against covid-19 and, so far, about 65% of the world's population is already protected against the disease.

 Source Lusa

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