Over 16 mln people contracted the novel coronavirus infection worldwide over the past week, almost 74,000 died, the World Health Organization (WHO) reported on Wednesday, Trend reports citing TASS.
The number of new infections decreased by 19%, while the number of fatalities grew by 4% compared to the previous seven-day period.
According to the WHO COVID-19 Weekly Epidemiological Update, a total of 16,097,642 new cases and 74,494 deaths were reported to the global organization on February 7-13.
A significant increase in case incidence, as compared to the previous week (January 31 - February 6), was registered in the Western Pacific region (up 19%). At the same time, case incidence decreased in the remaining five global regions, with the most noticeable decline reported by Southeast Asia (down 37%), followed by America (down 32%) and Africa (down 30%). Europe, which accounts for 60% of all cases registered in the past seven days, saw a decline of 16%.
Mortality grew in Eastern Mediterranean (up 38%), Western Pacific (up 27%), Africa (up 14%), America (up 5%) and Europe (up 1%), but decreased by 9% in Southeast Asia.
The biggest number of the new cases in the past week was reported by Russia (1,323,391), followed by Germany (1,322,071), the United States (1,237,530), Brazil (1,009,678) and France (979,228). The United States accounts for the majority of deaths (17,225), followed by India (6,686), Brazil (6,658), Russia (4,834) and Mexico (2,530).
As of 19:50 Moscow time on Tuesday, the overall case count since the start of the pandemic stood at 412,351,279 people, the death toll was at 5,821,004. Global cases grew by 1,469,326 in the past day, while fatalities increased by 7,351.