Paris (AFP)

The pandemic caused by the coronavirus has decelerated for the fourth consecutive week in the world, particularly in Europe: 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.

- About 550,000 daily cases -

With 554,200 contaminations recorded daily in the world this week, the indicator has fallen again (-13% compared to the previous week), according to an AFP report stopped on Thursday.

The indicator began to grow continuously from February 20, after an unprecedented drop of more than a month at the start of the year, which had seen contaminations halved, around 355,000 daily cases.

He has been declining for four weeks.

- Europe concentrates the strongest drops -

The pandemic slowed significantly in Europe (-24%) this week.

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The Old Continent concentrates the eight biggest decelerations of the week.

The sharpest decline is observed in Sweden (-51%, 1,900 new cases per day), ahead of Poland (-47%, 1,200), Germany (-41%, 5,200), Ukraine (-33%, 3,300) and Switzerland (-33%, 800).

- Acceleration in Africa -

The pandemic also decelerated in Asia (-19%) and the United States / Canada (-15%) this week, while it accelerated in Africa (+ 10%), the Middle East (+ 5%) and in Latin America / Caribbean (+ 4%).

Contamination is falling sharply in Oceania (-60%), but the coronavirus was already circulating there very little (100 cases per day this week, mainly in Papua New Guinea).

- Main accelerations -

The United Kingdom is the country where the epidemic is accelerating the most (+ 74%, 2,600 new cases per day), among the countries having recorded at least 1,000 daily infections during the past week.

The Indian variant, suspected of being particularly contagious, accounts for between half and three quarters of new cases, according to the government.

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Bahrain (+ 55%, 2,800), Bangladesh (+ 50%, 1,400), Kuwait (+ 46%, 1,400) and Malaysia (+ 43%, 7,000) follow.

- The most contaminations -

India, despite a deceleration in contaminations (-23% this week), remains, by far, the country having recorded the greatest number of new contaminations in absolute value this week (228,100 daily cases), ahead of Brazil (64,000, -3%), Argentina (30,900, + 5%), the United States (22,500, -23%) and Colombia (20,300, + 30%).

In proportion to the population, the country with the most cases this week remains the Maldives archipelago (2,042 per 100,000 inhabitants), ahead of the Seychelles (1,404) and Bahrain (1,148).

These three countries are nevertheless among the most advanced countries in terms of vaccination, since they respectively administered at least one dose to 57%, 71% and 53% of their population.

- Death -

India also leads the rankings for daily deaths (4,016 per day this week), ahead of Brazil (1,797), the United States (661), Colombia (494) and Argentina (491).

Globally, daily deaths fell this week (11,563 per day, -6%).

© 2021 AFP