THE NUMBER OF Covid-19 cases spiralled by more than a half across the world this week, but pandemic-linked deaths dropped 9%.

Health officials in Ireland today confirmed a further 20,110 cases of Covid-19.

As of 8am today, 682 people were in hospital in Ireland with the virus, 86 of whom were in intensive care.

Yesterday, 20,554 new cases of the virus were reported – the fourth time this week that a new daily record was set.

However, these figures are likely to be underestimates and Chief Medical Officer Dr Tony Holohan today said the actual daily figure could be closer to 30,000 cases.

Now let’s take a look at the state of play around the world:

1.1 million daily cases 

The average number of new daily coronavirus cases globally has passed the symbolic one million mark to 1.18 million, a 57% increase over the week before.

The Europe region accounted for 54% of the cases, recording 4,490,612 over the week. The United States and Canada zone provided another 32%, with 2,636,831 cases.

The confirmed cases only reflect a fraction of the actual number of infections, with varying counting practices and levels of testing in different countries.

Omicron is now the dominant variant in many countries.

Flare ups in Latin America, Oceania 

The main flare ups at a regional level took place in Oceania and Latin America and the Caribbean, where they more than doubled — by 157% and 138% respectively.

There was also a big increase of 92% in cases in the United States/Canada zone. The number of infections increased in Europe by 47% and in the Middle East by 37%.

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Cases in Africa, where the highly contagious Omicron variant was first detected, increased by just 8%. Asia bucked the world trend with its infection numbers down by 2%.

Some 30 countries from all corners of the world struck record weekly infection rates, including Denmark, Ireland, Cyprus, the United Kingdom and France.

Deaths down

At a global level the number of Covid-linked deaths dropped by 9% to 6,330 on average per day.

Europe accounted for more than half, or 53% of the deaths, with 23,324 people succumbing over the past week. The United States and Canada made up 24%, or 10,433, of the fatalities.

The countries reporting the highest death rates in proportion to their population were Trinidad and Tobago with 12.08 deaths per 100,000 inhabitants, Georgia (11.76), Hungary (8.25), Poland (7.85) and Croatia (7.65).

- © AFP 2021