Number of weekly COVID-19 cases and deaths continue to decline globally: WHO

The number of weekly COVID-19 cases and deaths continued to decline globally, the World Health Organisation has said, noting that both the case and death incidence have reduced for the past two months in the South-East Asian region.

The COVID-19 Weekly Epidemiological Update, released this week, said over 3.3 million new cases and over 55,000 new deaths were reported around the world during the week of September 20–26, 2021, a decrease of 10 per cent as compared to the previous week for both cases and deaths.

Globally, the numbers of weekly COVID-19 cases and deaths continued to decline, it said.

The largest decrease in new weekly cases was reported from the Eastern Mediterranean Region (17 per cent), followed by the Western Pacific Region (15 per cent), the Region of the Americas (14 per cent), the African Region (12 per cent) and the South-East Asia Region (10 per cent); while weekly cases in the European Region were similar to the previous week.

The number of new weekly deaths reported showed an over 15 per cent decline for all regions except for the European Region and the African Region. The largest decline in weekly deaths was reported from the Western Pacific Region, with a 24 per cent decline as compared to the previous week.

Globally, the cumulative number of confirmed COVID-19 cases now stand at over 231 million and the cumulative number of deaths is more than 4.7 million. Around the world, cases of the Alpha variant have been reported in 193 countries, territories or areas, while 142 countries have reported cases of the Beta variant and 96 countries have reported cases of the Gamma variant. The Delta variant has been reported in 187 countries, across all six WHO regions as of September 28.

The WHO update said that the highest numbers of new cases were reported from the US (765,827 new cases; 31 per cent decrease), Brazil (247,397 new cases; 135 per cent increase due to changes in reporting), the United Kingdom (230,494 new cases; 14 per cent increase), India (204,582 new cases; similar to previous week), and Turkey (192,778 new cases; similar to previous week), while the highest numbers of new deaths were from the US (14,842 new deaths, a 17 per cent decrease), Russia (5,469 new deaths, similar to the previous week), Mexico (3,689 new deaths, a 13 per cent increase), Brazil (3,727 new deaths, a 10 per cent increase), and Iran (2,967 new deaths, a 23 per cent decrease) respectively.

In the South-East Asian Region, both case and death incidence have declined for the past two months. In the past week, over 344,000 new cases and 5,200 new deaths were reported, decreases of 10 per cent and 20 per cent respectively as compared to the previous week.

This week, the highest numbers of new cases were reported from India (204,582 new cases; 14.8 new cases per 100,000; similar to last week's figures), Thailand (85,143 new cases; 122.0 new cases per 100,000; a 10 per cent decrease), and Indonesia (17,250 new cases; 6.3 new cases per 100,000; a 26 per cent decrease).

Seven of the 10 countries in the South-East Asian Region reported a decline in weekly deaths, with notable decreases reported from Nepal (by 38 per cent) and Indonesia (by 37 per cent). Bhutan did not report any new deaths.

The highest numbers of new deaths were reported from India (2,080 new deaths), Indonesia (999 new deaths) and Thailand (905 new deaths), it said.