The epidemic is decreasing almost everywhere in the world this week

The COVID-19 pandemic continued its steep decline in the world this week, with pollution slowing everywhere except Asia and Oceania.

Here are the important weekly developments, taken from the database of AFP.

An important indicator, the number of diagnosed cases reflects only a fraction of the true number of infections and comparisons between countries should be taken with caution, as testing policies vary greatly from country to country.

For statistics by country, the analysis is limited to those with at least 500,000 inhabitants and whose incidence exceeds 50 weekly cases per 100,000 inhabitants.

With 1.47 million daily infections recorded worldwide, the index fell sharply for the fifth consecutive week (-12% compared to the previous week), according to an AFP report that stopped Thursday.

Daily infections have more than halved since their peak at the end of January (3.37 million daily cases).

This week, only Asia and Oceania saw their situation deteriorate, with pollution increasing by 25% and 72%, respectively, compared to the previous week.

The situation is clearly improving in all other regions: -45% in the Middle East, -40% in Latin America / the Caribbean, -34% in Africa, -23% in the USA / Canada region and – 22% in the Europe region.

New Zealand is the country with the biggest acceleration during the week, with its daily cases doubling by seven (+590% over the previous week, 17,600 new daily cases).

It is followed by Hong Kong (+403%, 38,100), Vietnam (+119%, 120,600), South Korea (+40%, 170,300) and Thailand (+19%, 23,400).

Azerbaijan is the country with the largest weekly decline (-63%, 900), ahead of Armenia (-60%, 400), Georgia (-52%, 5,000), Panama (-51%, 400) and Israel (-50). %, 7000).

South Korea became the country with the most new infections in absolute terms this week (170,300 daily cases, +40%), given up by Germany (153,700, -7%). Vietnam (120,600, +119%) ranks third.

In terms of population, the region with the highest number of new cases this week is Hong Kong (3,555 per 100,000 inhabitants). The former British colony, which is experiencing an explosion of pollution when it succeeded in implementing a zero-Covid policy until then, intends to test its entire population in March.

It is followed by Latvia (3081) and New Zealand (2550).

Globally, the number of daily deaths continues to decline (-19%, 7,596 deaths per day).

The US has the most daily deaths in absolute terms, 1,644 per day this week, ahead of Russia (776) and Brazil (455).

As for population, as for infections, the region with the most deaths over the past week is Hong Kong (12.6 deaths per 100,000 inhabitants), ahead of Latvia (6.6) and Georgia. (6.3).