By AP
The World Health Organization (WHO) says the number of new coronavirus cases around the world fell 21 percent in the last week, marking the third consecutive week that COVID-19 cases have dropped.
WHO now says there were more than 12 million new coronavirus infections last week. The number of new COVID-19 deaths fell eight percent to about 67,000 worldwide, the first time that weekly deaths have fallen since early January.
The Western Pacific was the only region that saw an increase in COVID-19 cases, with a 29 percent jump, while the number of infections elsewhere dropped significantly. The number of new deaths also rose in the Western Pacific and Africa while falling everywhere else. The highest number of new COVID-19 cases were seen in Russia, Germany, Brazil, the U.S., and South Korea.
WHO said omicron remains the overwhelmingly dominant variant worldwide, accounting for more than 99 percent of sequences shared with the world’s biggest virus database.
