Paris (AFP)

Coronavirus contaminations continued to accelerate around the world this week, a trend that has affected almost all regions of the globe: here are the weekly highlights, 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.

- Almost 600,000 daily cases -

With 582,600 contaminations recorded daily this week, the indicator continued to rise (+ 11% compared to the previous week), according to an AFP report stopped on Thursday.

The indicator has been growing again for a month and a half, after an unprecedented drop of one month at the start of the year, which had seen contamination cut by 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 -

Almost all regions of the world have experienced accelerations this week: + 32% in Asia, + 15% in the United States / Canada, + 9% in Europe, + 6% in Latin America / Caribbean and Africa, + 2% in the Middle East.

Oceania, for its part, has seen its contamination slow (-31%), after several weeks of strong increase, linked to an outbreak in Papua New Guinea.

The vast majority of cases in this area (224 per day) remain concentrated in this poor Pacific country, which totals 207 cases per day.

The virus hardly circulates in the other countries of the zone.

- Main accelerations -

Tunisia is the country where the epidemic is accelerating the most this week (+ 77%, 1,000 new cases per day), among the countries having recorded at least 1,000 daily contaminations during the past week.

Azerbaijan (+ 74%, 1,900), Bangladesh (+ 72%, 4,800), Argentina (+ 66%, 12,200) and Croatia (+ 51%, 1,700) follow.

- Strongest declines -

The strongest decline of the week is observed in the West Bank (-41%, 1,000 new cases per day), ahead of Kuwait (-29%, 1,100), Estonia (-28%, 1,000), the Czech Republic (- 21%, 6,300) and the United Kingdom (-19%, 4,400).

- The most contaminations -

Brazil remains the country with the highest number of new infections this week, with 74,200 new daily cases (-4%), ahead of the United States (66,200, + 14%), India (62,000, + 39% ), France (38,700, + 12%) and Turkey (34,000, + 40%).

In proportion to the population, excluding micro-states, Hungary is the country with the most cases this week (604 per 100,000 inhabitants), ahead of Uruguay (539) and Poland (534).

Israel, which dominated this ranking in January, has since seen its incidence rate melt.

It now stands at 31 cases per 100,000 inhabitants, after peaking at around 650. Israel is the country with the most advanced vaccination campaign in the world.

Six in ten Israelis have received at least one dose of the Covid vaccine, more than half of the population has received the two doses needed for optimal immunization.

- Death -

Brazil also recorded the most deaths in the past week (3,117 per day on average), ahead of the United States (962), Mexico (493), Italy (435) and Poland (401) .

Globally, daily deaths have increased significantly this week (10,337 per day, + 13%), but they remain much lower than at the end of January, when they had flirted with 15,000 per day.

© 2021 AFP