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.

Daily cases halved

With 1.66 million contaminations recorded every day worldwide, the indicator has fallen sharply for the fourth consecutive week (-16% compared to the previous week), according to an AFP report stopped on Thursday.

Daily contaminations have been halved since their peak reached a month ago (3.37 million during the week of January 21 to 27).

Declines in most regions

This week, only Asia saw its situation deteriorate, with 20% more contamination compared to the previous week.

Covid-19: global assessment AFP

The situation is clearly improving in all the other regions: -39% in the Middle East, -37% in the United States/Canada zone, -24% in Africa and in the Latin America/Caribbean zone, -20% in Europe and -12% in Oceania.

Main accelerations

Hong Kong is the territory that recorded the biggest acceleration of the week (+331% compared to the previous week, 7,600 new daily cases).

The former British colony, which is seeing its contamination explode despite having succeeded in applying a zero-Covid policy until then, announced three series of PCR tests for each of its 7.4 million inhabitants and measures of social distancing tougher than ever.

Next come New Zealand (+187%, 2,500), South Korea (+85%, 121,900), Vietnam (+71%, 55,000) and Singapore (+36%, 18,300).

Main declines

Kosovo is the country with the largest weekly decline (-61%, 200), ahead of Azerbaijan (-55%, 2,500), Slovenia (-52%, 2,700), Paraguay (-51%, 900 ) and Peru (-51%, 4,400).

The most contamination

Germany becomes the country with the highest number of new infections in absolute value this week (164,600 daily cases, -9%), dethroning Russia (155,400, -17%).

South Korea (121,900, +85%) takes third place.

The world facing the coronavirus Simon MALFATTO AFP

As a proportion of the population, the country with the most new cases is again Denmark (3,612 per 100,000 inhabitants) this week, ahead of Latvia (3,558) and Estonia (2,789).

Death

Globally, the number of daily deaths continues to decline (-10%, 9,348 deaths per day).

The United States has the highest number of daily deaths in absolute value, 1,905 per day this week, ahead of Brazil (784) and Russia (772).

In proportion to the population, the country with the most deaths over the past week is Bulgaria (7.5 deaths per 100,000 inhabitants), ahead of Georgia (7.3) and Hungary (7.2).

© 2022 AFP