WHO: Covid-19 cases mostly drop, except for the Americas
India TodayThe number of new coronavirus cases and deaths are still falling globally after peaking in January, the World Health Organisation said. In its latest weekly assessment of the pandemic, the UN health agency said there were more than 3.7 million new infections and 9,000 deaths in the last week, drops of 3 per cent and 11 per cent respectively. WHO said it is tracking all omicron subvariants as “variants of concern.” It noted that countries which had a significant wave of disease caused by the omicron subvariant BA.2 appeared to be less affected by other subvariants like BA.4 and BA.5, which were responsible for the latest surge of disease in South Africa. Salim Abdool Karim, an infectious diseases expert at the University of KwaZulu-Natal, said it appeared that South Africa had passed its most recent wave of Covid-19 caused by the BA.4 and BA.5 subvariants; the country has been on the forefront of the pandemic since first detecting the omicron variant last November.