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The global pandemic slowed for the fifth week in a row. The number of new daily infections fell 11 percent to 457,000, according to a count by the AFP news agency based on official data released Thursday. Infection numbers had been rising since mid-June because of the highly contagious delta variant, but they have been declining for more than a month.
Confirmed cases, however, reflect only a fraction of actual infections, as counting methods and testing practices differ among countries. Nevertheless, the situation is improving in much of the world: Latin America and the Caribbean saw a 31 percent decrease in cases of infection, the Middle East saw a 21 percent decrease, and Asia saw a 15 percent decrease. In the United States and Canada, there were one-tenth fewer cases, and in Africa and Europe, the incidence of infection remained at a stable level.
The largest increase in new infections was in Lithuania at 62 percent, followed by Romania at 60 percent. There were also large increases in South Korea (46 percent) and Ukraine (36 percent). Case numbers fell the most in Japan, down 42 percent, followed by Morocco (37 percent), Sri Lanka (36 percent), Indonesia (33 percent) and Israel (31 percent). Worldwide, the number of daily deaths fell seven percent to 7,779.
The fastest vaccination pace among countries with more than one million inhabitants was in Cuba, with its home-grown vaccine. Every day, 2.16 percent of the population there is vaccinated. It is followed by South Korea with 1.49 percent and Taiwan with 1.21 percent.
- source: k.at/picture:pixabay.com
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