With another steady increase in cases last week, the world is now adding more than 500,000 cases of COVID-19 a day, with the more transmissible Delta (B1617.2) SARS-CoV-2 variant now in 132 of the world's 197 countries, the World Health Organization (WHO) said yesterday in its latest weekly update on the pandemic, according to a news report from the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy (CIDRAP) at the University of Minnesota.
Maria Van Kerkhove, PhD, the WHO's technical lead for COVID-19, said on Twitter today that there are marked regional differences and variations by and even within countries. She also warned that deaths were up sharply, rising by 21% compared to the week before. "These trends are extremely concerning," she said.
Much of the recent rise is driven by substantial illness increases in the WHO's Americas and Western Pacific regions, with a large portion of the spike in deaths from the Americas and South East Asia regions, the WHO said. The global total could pass 200 million cases in the next 2 weeks, it added.
The five countries that reported the most cases over the last week include the United States, Brazil, Indonesia, the United Kingdom, and India. Among the countries reporting the biggest increases in cases are France (up 178%), the United States (131%), Vietnam (95%) and Thailand (40%).
Eight more countries reported the Delta variant for the first time last week, putting the total at 132.
