Deaths associated with covid-19 have increased by 3% to 76,000 and for the third week in a row over 4 million new cases were reported globally.
As a result the cumulative numbers of cases have increased to over 83 million with over 1.8 million deaths globally since the start of the pandemic. There are also recent reports of different variants of SARS-CoV-2 that is raising serious concern about and interest in the impact of viral changes.
As of 5 January 2021, the VOC-202012/01 variant initially detected in the United Kingdom has been detected in a small number of cases in 40 other countries/territories/areas in five of the six World Health Organisatoin (WHO) bases across the world.
The Americans accounted for 47% of all new cases and 42% of all new deaths globally in the past week. Also, new cases and deaths remained high in the European Region, which accounted for 38% and 43% respectively, showing a slight decrease in new cases and a slight increase in new deaths.
Meanwhile new cases and deaths continue to decline in the South-East Asia and Eastern Mediterranean regions.
In the African Region, while both new cases and deaths remain low in absolute numbers, for the fourth week in a row, the region is reporting the largest percentage increase globally in weekly reported case numbers and this week there was a further 13% increase in new cases and 28% increase in new deaths. In the Western Pacific Region, new cases remained comparable to the previous week, but new deaths rose by 10%.
