Pandemic begins to ebb

The Covid-19 pandemic started to ease around the world this week after a three-and-a-half-month rampage of ever-increasing infections.

Here is a state of play based on AFP’s database.

10% drop

The average number of global daily cases dropped by a tenth this week to 3.03 million, after increasing for 15 weeks in a row, according to an AFP tally to Thursday.

The confirmed cases only reflect a fraction of the actual number of infections, with varying counting practices and levels of testing in different countries.

Global sigh of relief

Almost every region of the world saw an improvement over the past seven days.

In the US/Canada zone the number of new daily cases dropped by 38%, while Africa saw a 21% fall and Asia a 16% drop. Cases in the Latin America/Caribbean zone decreased by 13% and in the Middle East by 4%.

The situation was almost stable in Europe, with a 1% rise.

Once a catch-up in Australian figures is factored out, the number of infections in Oceania decreased by around a tenth.

Main spikes

Iran saw the biggest spike in the number of new cases this week with a 233% rise.

The Solomon Islands in the Pacific followed with 138% more cases, Armenia with 137%, neighbouring Azerbaijan was 133% up, while cases doubled in South Korea.

Main drops

The Dominican Republic saw the biggest drop of the week with 65% fewer cases, followed by Nepal with 55% less, Argentina (down 51%), Jamaica (minus 50%) and Morocco (minus 49%).

US still has most cases

The US remained by far the country with the highest number of new cases with 362,800 per day on average, which nevertheless was a drop of 39% on the previous week.

Next in line came France with 289,200 cases, down a fifth, and India where they fell by a third to 204,500.

On a per capita basis, the country with the most new cases over the week was Denmark with 5,337 per 100,000 inhabitants, followed by Slovenia with 5,112, Israel (4,497), Georgia (3,508) and Portugal (3,455).

Deaths

The number of Covid-linked deaths increased globally for the fourth week in a row to 10,507 per day, a rise of 16%.

Even though the highly contagious Omicron variant led to four times more daily infections than previous waves, daily deaths remain far lower than their record high in January 2021 when they skirted 15,000.

The US recorded the most deaths this week with 2,576 per day, ahead of India (1,040) and Brazil (702).

The countries reporting the highest death rates in proportion to their population were all in the Balkans – Bosnia (11 deaths per 100,000 inhabitants), Croatia (8.9), Northern Macedonia (8.7), and Montenegro and Bulgaria (8.0 each).