New COVID cases, deaths continue to drop globally: World Health Organization
New COVID cases and deaths continue to decline globally, the World Health Organization said Tuesday in its weekly epidemiological update.
Approximately 3.3 million new infections, and around 55,000 coronavirus-related fatalities, were reported from Sept. 20 to 26, representing a drop of 10% for both new cases and deaths.
According to the report, the biggest drops in new cases were seen in the Eastern Mediterranean region, followed by the Western Pacific and the Americas.
Nearly all regions in the world reported a large decline in the number of deaths, with a drop of at least 15%, compared to the previous week. Europe reported a similar number of deaths, while Africa reported a slight increase of 5%.
The United States reported the highest number of new cases: 765,827 new infections, which represented a 31% decrease from the previous week.
Overall, the number of new cases in the Americas (approximately 1.2 million) represented a decrease of 14% compared to last week. The number of deaths (around 23,000) showed a 10% drop.
According to the report, the highly contagious delta variant has now been reported in 187 countries — two more than last week — across all six WHO regions.
The U.N. health agency, in collaboration with national authorities and researchers, routinely monitors the impacts of variants of SARS-SoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, identifying risks of potential variants of concern (VOCs) or variants of interest (VOIs).
“As countries gradually resume non-essential international travel, the introduction of risk mitigation measures aiming to reduce travel-associated exportation, importation and onward transmission of SARS-CoV-2 should be based on thorough risk assessments conducted systematically and routinely,” WHO said in the report.
Since the beginning of the pandemic, there have been more than 231 million confirmed COVID-19 cases around the world, including more than 4.7 million deaths.
