Geneva: All regions continue to report decreasing trends in the number of weekly cases of COVID-19 and deaths, the World Health Organization (WHO) stated here today.
Globally, the number of new COVID-19 cases and deaths has continued to decline since the end of March 2022. During the week of 11 through 17 April 2022, over 5 million cases and over 18 000 deaths were reported, decreases of 24% and 12% respectively, as compared to the previous week.
All regions reported decreasing trends in the number of new weekly cases and deaths (Table 1). As of 17 April 2022, over 500 million confirmed cases and over 6 million deaths have been reported globally.
WHO reiterated that these trends should be interpreted with caution as several countries are progressively changing their COVID-19 testing strategies, resulting in lower overall numbers of tests performed and consequently lower numbers of cases detected.
At the country level, the highest number of new weekly cases were reported from the Republic of Korea (972 082 new cases; -33%), France (827 350 new cases; -11%), Germany (769 466 new cases; -25%), Italy (421 707 new cases; -6%), and Japan (342 665 new cases; +1%).
The highest number of new weekly deaths were reported from the United States of America (3 076 new deaths; – 9%), the Russian Federation (1 784 new deaths; -11%), the Republic of Korea (1 671 new deaths; -24%), Germany (1227 new deaths; -27%), and Italy (944 new deaths; -5%).
The Omicron variant remains the dominant variant circulating globally, accounting for nearly all sequences recently reported to GISAID. Among the 313 715 sequences uploaded to GISAID with specimens collected in the last 30 days, 312 033 (99.5%) were Omicron, 136 (<0.1%) were Delta and 1 393 (0.4%) sequences were not assigned to a Pango lineage.
– global bihari bureau
