Newly reported coronavirus cases are dropping worldwide, but World Health Organization officials urged caution Wednesday, saying that a drop in testing may be contributing to that decline and that covid deaths remain alarmingly high.
During the week starting Feb. 7, health officials reported 16.3 million new infections globally, an 18.2 percent drop from the prior week, according to WHO figures. Deaths, though, inched higher in the same period, to above 73,000, an increase of 0.5 percent from the previous week.
“It’s the sixth week in a row that we’re seeing increasing reports of deaths,” Maria Van Kerkhove, a WHO epidemiologist, said at a live-streamed event. “At this point in the pandemic, when we have tools that can save people’s lives, this is far, far too many.”
Mike Ryan, the WHO’s emergencies chief, urged people to get vaccinated and to keep up preventive measures such as masking, isolating or quarantining. “This idea that we’re just going to abandon everything, I think is a very premature concept in many countries right now,” he said.
The WHO-designated Western Pacific region — which covers most of the countries located between Mongolia and Australia — was the only one of its six regions to record an increase in cases for the week starting Feb. 7. It logged almost 1.57 million new cases that week, reflecting a 18.7 percent increase from the prior week.
All other regions including Africa, where less than a fifth of the continent’s 1.2 billion people have received at least one dose of a coronavirus vaccine, saw the count of new infections fall, WHO tallies show.
The Eastern Mediterranean region — including countries in Central Asia, North Africa and the Middle East — saw the largest proportional jump in deaths during the Feb. 7 week, reporting 3,286 fatalities, nearly a 40 percent uptick from the previous week.
