The Covid-19 pandemic continued its flare-up this week, particularly in Asia and Europe, but the number of related global deaths fell by a fifth.
The average number of global daily cases rose 12 percent over the week to 1.8 million, after another twist the week before, according to an AFP tally on Thursday.
Western European countries are seeing an uptick, including France, where cases increased by 35 percent, while Italy and Britain each increased by 42 percent.
In Asia, several countries have broken their own records, including South Korea, Vietnam and Thailand.
The confirmed cases represent only a fraction of the actual number of infections, with different counting methods and testing levels in different countries.
The pandemic’s rebound is being driven by Oceania, where new cases are up 86 percent from the previous week. They also increased by 23 percent in Asia and by seven percent in Europe.
However, the situation in Africa continues to improve strongly, where the number fell by 56 percent.
In the Middle East, cases fell by 26 percent, while the Latin America-Caribbean zone saw a fifth fewer cases and the United States-Canada zone registered a 12 percent drop.
Laos registered the largest increase in new cases at 151 percent over the course of the week, followed by Ireland at 52 percent more, South Korea 47 percent and Finland 44 percent.
South Korea registered the highest number of new cases this week, by capita, at 5,288 per 100,000 people.
Austria followed with 3,484, New Zealand (2,706), Cyprus (2,613) and the Netherlands (2,504).
The number of Covid-related deaths continued to fall, by 20 percent to an average of 5,401 a day.
The decline was reflected in all regions of the world.
Hong Kong reported by far the highest death rate relative to population at 26.49 per 100,000 population.
It was followed at a distance by Latvia with 4.61, Denmark 4.33, Slovakia 4.08 and Chile 3.76.
This post Pandemic surge continues, but deaths drop by a fifth
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