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.

More than 1.8 million cases per day

With 1.8 million contaminations recorded every day worldwide, an increase of 12% over seven days according to an AFP report closed on Thursday, the indicator continues its recovery observed last week.

Western European countries are observing an epidemic rebound, such as in France (+35%), Italy (+42%) or the United Kingdom (+42%), and several Asian countries are currently breaking their contamination records, including South Korea, Vietnam and Thailand.

Contrasting situations

The resumption of the epidemic is driven by Oceania, where contaminations jumped by 86% compared to the previous week, Asia (+ 23%) and Europe (+ 7%).

On the other hand, the situation continues to improve markedly in Africa (-56%), in the Middle East (-26%), in the Latin America/Caribbean zone (-20%) and in the United States/Canada zone ( -12%).

Main accelerations

Laos is the country with the strongest acceleration in the number of infections this week (+151% compared to the previous week), followed by Ireland (+52%), South Korea (+47%), Finland (+44%) and Italy (+42%).

Strongest impact

In proportion to the population, South Korea is the country where the number of contaminations was the highest this week with 5,288 cases per 100,000 inhabitants.

Austria (3,484 cases), New Zealand (2,706 cases), Cyprus (2,613 cases) and the Netherlands (2,504 cases) follow.

Decline in deaths

The number of deaths continues to fall, with 5,401 daily deaths on average over the past seven days, a decrease of 20% compared to the previous week.

The number of deaths is falling in all regions of the world.

In proportion to the population, the territory having recorded the most deaths during the past week remains Hong Kong, with 26.49 deaths per 100,000 inhabitants.

They are followed by Latvia (4.61), Denmark (4.33), Slovakia (4.08) and Chile (3.76).

© 2022 AFP