The weekly number of new recorded coronavirus infections worldwide was last week at its highest level to date, the World Health Organization has announced, as deaths from Covid-19 in Europe increased by more than a quarter week on week.
Almost 1 million people have now died from the coronavirus since it emerged in China at the beginning of the year.
With a new seven-day high of just short of 2 million new cases being recorded by the WHO, the latest tally represents a 6% increase over the previous week as well as “the highest number of reported cases in a single week since the beginning of the epidemic”, the UN health agency said. That figure is skewed by the fact testing has become much more widespread globally over recent months.
The latest rise in infections, amid a resurgence in cases that has sent countries including the UK and across Europe scrambling to reintroduce restrictions, comes despite a global decrease in the weekly number of deaths from the virus.
However the figures showed that deaths from the disease in Europe increased by 27% in the last week, with more than 4,000 recorded.
France, Russia, Spain and Britain reported the highest number of new cases in Europe in the past week, while Hungary and Denmark reported the highest relative increase in deaths.
According to the WHO, almost 31 million have now been infected by the virus worldwide. The largest concentration of recorded infections continues to be centred in the Americas – which is responsible for almost half of all infections – as the US approaches the grim milestone of 200,000 deaths.
Nearly all regions of the world experienced a rise in new cases last week, the WHO said, with infections increasing by 11% and 10% respectively in Europe and the Americas. Only Africa went against the upward trend, reporting a 12% drop in new cases from a week earlier.
The figures, released by the WHO late on Monday, have underlined the huge difficulties countries are facing in attempting to bring the spread of the virus under control without an effective and widely available vaccine.
Last week, about 37,700 new deaths linked to the virus were recorded worldwide, marking a decline of 10% compared with the previous week. The decline was driven by the Americas, long the hardest-hit region, where new deaths were 22% lower than a week earlier, and by Africa where new deaths dropped 16%.
But the Americas still account for half of all reported cases and 55% of deaths in the world. The clear drop in new deaths in the region were driven mainly by decreases in Colombia, Mexico, Ecuador and Bolivia.
The US, the world’s worst-hit country, and Brazil, the second-worst, continued to report the highest number of deaths, each reporting more than 5,000 new deaths in the past week.
Britain continues to have the highest number of cumulative deaths in Europe, at nearly 42,000 since the beginning of the pandemic.
Agencies contributed to this story.
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