Paris (AFP)

Coronavirus contaminations continued to increase in the world this week, however, remaining a good distance from the record at the beginning of January: here are the significant weekly developments, taken from an AFP database.

An important indicator, however, the number of cases diagnosed only reflects a fraction of the actual number of infections and comparisons between countries should be taken with caution, as testing policies differ from one country to another.

- More than 400,000 daily cases -

With 465,300 contaminations recorded daily this week, the indicator continued to rise (+ 14% compared to the previous week), according to an AFP report stopped on Thursday.

The indicator has been growing again for a month, after an unprecedented drop of one month at the start of the year, which had seen contaminations cut in half.

Despite the increase in recent weeks, the indicator remains far from its record (743,600 new daily cases during the week of January 5 to 11).

- Increases almost everywhere -

This week, only Africa and the Middle East are relatively spared, with the contagion stabilizing.

All the other regions are experiencing accelerations: + 34% in Asia, + 18% in Europe, + 15% in the United States / Canada and + 5% in Latin America / Caribbean.

Oceania, for its part, has seen its contaminations sharply increase (+ 75%, but only 110 new daily cases), due to an outbreak in Papua New Guinea.

The country, one of the poorest in the Pacific, has recorded an average of 100 cases per day this week, a figure that is arguably vastly underestimated.

The coronavirus hardly circulates in the rest of the area.

- Main accelerations -

Bangladesh is the country where the epidemic is accelerating the most (+ 92%, 1,500 new cases per day), among the countries having recorded more than 1,000 daily infections during the past week.

Moldova (+ 78%, 1,800), Ukraine (+ 55%, 11,200), Pakistan (+ 52%, 2,600) and the Philippines (+ 52%, 4,800) follow.

- Strongest declines -

The strongest decline of the week is observed in Israel (-44%, 1,700 new cases per day), a country whose vaccination campaign is the most advanced in the world.

Almost 60% of the population there received at least one dose of the anti-Covid vaccine, about one in two Israelis received the two doses necessary for optimal immunization.

The incidence rate in the country has melted in two months, from 650 cases per 100,000 population to 140 this week.

Follow the United Arab Emirates (-24%, 1,900), which are also among the best performers in terms of immunization, Malaysia (-20%, 1,300), Mexico (-19%, 4,500) and Kuwait (-17 %, 1.100).

- The most contaminations -

Brazil remains the country with the highest number of new infections this week, with 71,900 new daily cases (+ 4%), ahead of the United States (64,500, + 15%), France (27,300, + 24%) , India (27,000, + 47%) and Italy (22,500, + 5%).

In proportion to the population, excluding micro-states, Estonia is the country with the most cases this week (760 per 100,000 inhabitants), ahead of the Czech Republic (684) and Montenegro (596).

This podium has remained unchanged for a month.

- Death -

Brazil has recorded the most deaths in the past week (2,087 per day on average), ahead of the United States (1,242), Mexico (495), Russia (441) and Italy (382).

Globally, daily deaths increased slightly this week (8,800 per day, + 2%), but they are much lower than at the end of January, when they had flirted with 15,000 per day.

© 2021 AFP