In the 28 days from January 9 to February 5, nearly 10.5 million new Covid cases and over 90,000 deaths were recorded globally. Compared to the previous 28 days, “dominated by a large wave of infections and deaths in the western Pacific region and in particular in China”, cases mark -89% and deaths -8%, reports the World Health Organization in the bulletin that it distributes weekly. As of February 5, since the beginning of the pandemic there are over 754 million confirmed infections and over 6.8 million deaths.
The WHO reiterates that “current trends are underestimations of the real number of infections and reinfections” from Sars-CoV-2, “as prevalence surveys show. This is partly due to the reduction of tests and delays in reporting in many countries. The data presented may be incomplete and therefore should be interpreted with caution”, warns the Geneva agency which, in monitoring changes in epidemiological trends, has decided to make comparisons on 28-day intervals because “this helps to account for reporting delays, smooth out weekly fluctuations in the number of infections, and provide a clearer picture of where the pandemic is accelerating or decelerating.”
Regionally, new cases have decreased or remained stable in all WHO regions over the past 28 days (-92% Western Pacific, -65% Southeast Asia, -62% Europe, -43% Americas, -27% Africa, – 2% Eastern Mediterranean), while new deaths increased in three regions (+45% Eastern Mediterranean, +21% Africa, +14% Americas) and decreased or remained stable in the other three (-61% Southeast Asia, -38% Europe, -3% Western Pacific). For Italy, again in the last 28 days, WHO reports a 66% drop in infections and 40% in deaths.
In China -96% infections and -11 deaths – Italy second in Europe for both data
Over the past 28 days, the highest number of new Covid cases were reported by China (3,485,265, -96%), Japan (2,429,215, -42%), United States (1,328,654, -27%), Republic of Korea (736,811, -59%) and Brazil (389,444, -59%), while China (40,812, -11%), USA (15,294, +40%), Japan (9,874, -59%) leads the way for reported deaths +28%), United Kingdom (2,671, -32%) and Brazil (2,566, -37%).
Zooming into the European region, the WHO report indicates over 1.2 million infections and 13,652 deaths in the last 28 days. Three countries recorded increases of 20% or more in new cases (Kosovo +131%, Georgia +65% and Montenegro +38%). The highest number of new infections was reported by Germany (300,876, 361.8/100,000, -59%), Italy (187,023, 313.6/100,000, -66%) and the Russian Federation (169,762, 116.3/ 100 thousand, +5%), while in the lead for new deaths are the United Kingdom (2,671, 3.9/100 thousand, -32%), Italy (1,740, 2.9/100 thousand, -40%) and France (1,522, 2.3/100 thousand, -51%).