COVID-19: The epidemic is accelerating again this week

The COVID-19 pandemic stopped declining this week in the world, and infections began to rise again, driven by a resurgence of cases in Asia. Here are the important weekly developments, taken from the database of AFP.

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An important indicator, the number of diagnosed cases reflects only a fraction of the true number of infections and comparisons between countries should be taken with caution, as testing policies vary greatly from country to country.

For statistics by country, the analysis is limited to those with at least 500,000 inhabitants and whose incidence exceeds 50 weekly cases per 100,000 inhabitants.

With 1.59 million daily pollution cases recorded worldwide, the index is rising again (+8% compared to the previous week) after five weeks of decline, according to an AFP report halted Thursday.

However, the number of daily infections remains half of that during the peak at the end of January (3.37 million daily cases).

Asia and Oceania remain the two regions where the situation is deteriorating the most this week, with pollution increasing by 27% and 20%, respectively, compared to the previous week.

The index is also slightly back in the red in Africa (+3%) and Europe (+1%).

On the other hand, the situation continues to improve significantly in the US/Canada region (-30%), in the Middle East (-27%) and in Latin America/Caribbean (-12%).

The Netherlands is the country with the largest acceleration during the week (+80% y/y, 62,800 new daily cases).

It is followed by Vietnam (+63%, 196,400), South Korea (+55%, 264,000), Portugal (+35%, 12,200) and Ecuador (+28%, 1,500).

Georgia is the country with the largest weekly decline (-64%, 1,800), ahead of Belarus (-56%, 1,500), Turkey (-44%, 33,300), Lebanon (-43%, 1, 100) and Norway (-41). %, 7800).

South Korea is the country with the highest number of new infections this week, both in absolute terms (264,000 daily cases, +55%) and related to its population (3,605 weekly cases per 100,000 inhabitants).

In absolute terms, Vietnam (196,400 daily cases, +63%) and Germany (177,200, +15%) complete the platform, while South Korea follows Hong Kong (3,002 cases per 100,000 inhabitants) and New Zealand (2934) as the proportion of the population.

Globally, the number of daily deaths continues to decline (-12%, 6,700 deaths per day).

The United States has the most daily deaths in absolute terms, 1,165 deaths per day this week, ahead of Russia (700) and Brazil (501).

In terms of population, the region with the most deaths over the past week is Hong Kong (23.8 deaths per 100,000 inhabitants), far ahead of Lithuania (6.0) and Denmark (5.5).