In its weekly update, the World Health Organisation on Wednesday has rose major concern as the global health body in the report has concluded that there is 12 percent increase in COVID-19 cases globally. In the past week (July 12-July 18) 1 percent deaths have been reported, while the concerning Delta virus cases have been found in 124 countries.
WHO chief scientist Soumya Swaminathan noting the update has cautioned that the pandemic is surging again and warned that people and countries need to be extremely careful.
Accordng to the report, The global number of new cases reported last week (12-18 July 2021) was over 3.4 million, a 12% increase as compared to the previous week. Globally, COVID-19 weekly case incidence increased with an average of around 4,90,000 cases reported each day over the past week as compared to 4,00,000 cases reported daily in the previous week. The cumulative number of cases reported globally is now over 190 million and the number of deaths exceeds 4 million.
The report noted that at this rate, it is expected that the cumulative number of cases reported globally could exceed 200 million in the next three weeks.
In the past week, the region of the Americas and the Europe reported the highest weekly case incidence per capita, both reporting 95 new cases per 1,00,000 population, as well as the highest number of deaths per population over the past week, with 2.2 and 0.8 new deaths per 1,00,000 population, respectively. The Eastern Mediterranean and South-East Asia Regions reported 48 and 41 new cases per 1,00,000 population, respectively.
Over the past week, the highest numbers of new cases were reported from Indonesia (3,50,273 new cases; 44% increase), the United Kingdom (2,96,447 new cases; 41% increase), Brazil (2,87,610 new cases; 14% decrease), India (2,68,843 new cases; 8% decrease), and the United States of America (2,16,433 new cases; 68% increase).
Variants wise:
Globally, cases of the Alpha variant have been reported in 180 countries, territories or areas (hereafter countries; six new countries in the past week), while 130 countries (seven new countries) have reported cases of the Beta variant; 78 countries (three new countries) have reported cases of the Gamma variant; and 124 countries (13 new countries) have reported cases of the Delta variant.
Reasons for increase in transmission of COVID-19:
The WHO has laid down four factors for the increase in transmission: the circulation of more transmissible Variants of Concern (VOCs), relaxation of public health social measures originally intended to control transmission, increases in social mixing, and the large number of people who remain susceptible to SARS-CoV-2 infection as a result of inequitable vaccine distribution around the world.
