The entrance to the World Health Organization (WHO), Geneva.
(illustration) -
Fabrice COFFRINI / AFP
According to an announcement from the World Health Organization (WHO) on Tuesday, the number of new cases of Covid-19 worldwide fell by 16% last week.
In total, 2.7 million have been identified.
By comparison, there were more than five million new infections in the first week of January.
The number of deaths also fell by 10% from last week to 81,000 new reports.
WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus noted that this was the fifth week in a row that the number of cases discovered has declined.
Of the six regions taken into account by the organization, five recorded a fall.
Thus, Africa and the Western Pacific have experienced a decline of 20%.
Variants progress
It was 18% in Europe, 16% in the Americas and 13% in Southeast Asia.
Conversely, the eastern Mediterranean has seen its number of new cases increase by 7%.
"The fire is not extinguished, but we have reduced its size," said the director general of the WHO.
These encouraging results show, according to him, "that simple public health measures work, even in the presence of variants".
The one from Great Britain was reported in 94 countries last week, eight more.
The South African variant has been used in 46 countries, two more, and the Brazilian in 21 countries, six more.
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