The cases of covid reported in the world fell 17% during the last week in relation to the previous one, but the deaths showed an opposite trend and rose by 7%, according to the epidemiological report of the World Health Organization (WHO).
In absolute terms, almost 68,000 deaths from covid-19 were registered, which has raised the total number of cases since the pandemic began — at the beginning of 2020 — to 5.7 million.
New confirmed cases of the infectious disease were 19 million in the last week and the global cumulative total is now 392 million positive people. The actual number of infected people is higher if you take into account that not all people who have had the disease were tested.
The regions of the Eastern Mediterranean (including the Middle East) and the Americas were the ones that reported the most important growth in new cases (36% in both cases), while Europe registered the smallest increase (7%).
In terms of deaths, the region of Southeast Asia (includes India) was where they increased the most (up to 67%), while in Europe and the Americas they remained stable and decreased in Africa (-14%).
The highest number of deaths was reported from the United States, despite which they were 15% less than in the previous week; followed by India (69% more); from Russia, where the rate remained stable; from Brazil, with an increase of 39%, and from Mexico (48%).
According to the WHO epidemiological analysis, all the variants of the coronavirus that were known before the omicron show a strong decline. With omicron, omnipresent, it now represents 96.7% of all the genetic sequences of coronaviruses carried out in the last month.
The WHO experts noted that although the prevalence of the omicron variant continues to increase globally and is present almost everywhere in the world, several of the countries where it was detected at an early stage are now reporting a reduction in the total number. of new cases of covid.