the pandemic is decreasing almost everywhere in the world this week

The Covid-19 pandemic continued its sharp decline in the world this week, with contamination decelerating everywhere except in Asia and Oceania. Here are the significant weekly developments, taken from an AFP database.

Important indicator, the number of cases diagnosed only reflects a fraction of the real number of contaminations and comparisons between countries should be taken with caution, as testing policies differ greatly from one country to another.

For statistics by country, the analysis is limited to those with at least 500,000 inhabitants whose incidence rate exceeds 50 weekly cases per 100,000 inhabitants.

– Less than 1.5 million cases per day –

With 1.47 million contaminations recorded every day worldwide, the indicator has fallen sharply for the fifth consecutive week (-12% compared to the previous week), according to an AFP report stopped on Thursday.

Daily contaminations have been more than halved since their peak at the end of January (3.37 million daily cases).

– Decreases in most regions –

This week, only Asia and Oceania saw their situation deteriorate, with respectively 25% and 72% more contamination compared to the previous week.

The situation is clearly improving in all the other regions: -45% in the Middle East, -40% in the Latin America/Caribbean zone, -34% in Africa, -23% in the United States/Canada zone and – 22% in Europe.

– Main accelerations –

New Zealand is the country that recorded the biggest acceleration of the week, seeing its daily cases multiplied by seven (+590% compared to the previous week, 17,600 new daily cases).

This is followed by Hong Kong (+403%, 38,100), Vietnam (+119%, 120,600), South Korea (+40%, 170,300) and Thailand (+19%, 23,400).

– Main declines –

Azerbaijan is the country with the largest weekly decline (-63%, 900), ahead of Armenia (-60%, 400), Georgia (-52%, 5,000), Panama (-51%, 400) and Israel (-50%, 7,000).

– The most contamination –

South Korea becomes the country with the highest number of new infections in absolute value this week (170,300 daily cases, +40%), dethroning Germany (153,700, -7%). Vietnam (120,600, +119%) takes third place.

In proportion to the population, the territory with the most new cases this week is Hong Kong (3,555 per 100,000 inhabitants). The former British colony, which is seeing its contamination explode when it had succeeded in applying a zero-Covid policy until then, intends to test its entire population in March.

Latvia (3,081) and New Zealand (2,550) follow.

– Death –

Globally, the number of daily deaths continues to decline (-19%, 7,596 deaths per day).

The United States has the highest number of daily deaths in absolute value, 1,644 per day this week, ahead of Russia (776) and Brazil (455).

In proportion to the population, as for contaminations, the territory having recorded the most deaths over the past week is Hong Kong (12.6 deaths per 100,000 inhabitants), ahead of Latvia (6.6) and Georgia ( 6.3).

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