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Even though over 75,000 COVID-related deaths have been reported last week globally, the number of coronavirus infections that were recorded was significantly low as compared to previous weeks. The World Health Organisations (WHO), however, cautioned that the number of cases was low as there was a drop in the testing rate globally.
At the peak of this pandemic, the highest week ever in this pandemic was around 110,000 deaths and that was considered to be the most awful week in the pandemic. We’re at 75,000. It’s not a whole long way from there, WHO officials said.
“So, we’re seeing the number of cases appearing to fall away and yet the number of deaths is increasing and when you see that trend epidemiologically, you then ask yourself the question, is that real? How could the deaths be going up and the number of cases is coming down?" said WHO's Mike Ryan.
Now, it could be that the deaths we’re seeing now are a lag from a few weeks ago and that’s one explanation. The explanation is that testing rates have dropped off remarkably in many countries. So, countries who are claiming now to say our transmission has dropped and we’ve got two to threefold less cases this week then we had six weeks ago, go and look at the testing rates and you see that the testing rates are much lower, Ryan pointed out.
The UN health agency on Thursday released its weekly report on COVID-19 and according to it, just over 16 million new COVID-19 infections and about 75,000 deaths were reported worldwide last week.
The Western Pacific was the only region to report a rise in new weekly cases, an increase of about 19%, Southeast Asia reported a decrease of about 37%, the biggest drop globally. The number of deaths rose by 38% in the Middle East and by about one-third in the Western Pacific.
The biggest number of new COVID-19 cases was seen in Russia. Cases there and elsewhere in Eastern Europe doubled in recent weeks, driven by a surge of the omicron variant.
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