WHO worried by increased Covid cases, fatalities in Africa

World Health Organisation has raised concern over the new cases of coronavirus and fatalities related to it in the African continent.

On Thursday, WHO Director-General Tedros Ghebreyesus said that both the number of cases and deaths are almost 40 per cent higher than the week before.

Tedros said if the current situation continues, the vaccines against the virus which will be donated next year will be too late for those who are dying, infected, or at risk today.

WHO’s weekly epidemiological update on Covid-19 shows that the global numbers of cases and deaths continued to decrease over the past week (14-20 June 2021) with just over 2.5 million new weekly cases and over 64, 000 deaths.

This is a six per cent and a 12 per cent decrease respectively, compared to the previous week.

The number of cases reported globally now exceeds 177 million, the lowest weekly case incidence since February 2021 was reported last week.

The mortality remains high with more than 9,000 deaths reported each day over the past week globally.

According to the WHO data, Africa recorded 132,078 new cases in the last seven days, compared to 1,925 deaths over the same period.

The cumulative cases of the virus in Africa are over 3.7 million and nearly 92,000 deaths.

Globally, 2.5 million new cases were reported in the last seven days, while the number of deaths was above 64,000.