Source: As­so­ci­at­ed Press

GENE­VA (AP) — The num­ber of new coro­n­avirus cas­es glob­al­ly in­creased by 7% in the last week, dri­ven by ris­ing in­fec­tions in the West­ern Pa­cif­ic, even as re­port­ed deaths from COVID-19 fell, the World Health Or­ga­ni­za­tion said.

There were more than 12 mil­lion new week­ly cas­es and just un­der 33,000 deaths, a 23% de­cline in mor­tal­i­ty, ac­cord­ing to the U.N. health agency’s re­port on the pan­dem­ic is­sued late Tues­day.

Con­firmed cas­es of the virus had been falling steadi­ly world­wide since Jan­u­ary but rose again last week, due to the more in­fec­tious omi­cron vari­ant and the sus­pen­sion of COVID-19 pro­to­cols in nu­mer­ous coun­tries in Eu­rope, North Amer­i­ca and else­where.

Health of­fi­cials have said re­peat­ed­ly that omi­cron caus­es milder dis­ease than pre­vi­ous ver­sions of the coro­n­avirus and that vac­ci­na­tion, in­clud­ing a boost­er, ap­pears high­ly pro­tec­tive.

The West­ern Pa­cif­ic re­mained the on­ly re­gion in the world where coro­n­avirus cas­es are ris­ing, re­port­ing a 21% jump last week, con­tin­u­ing weeks of in­crease. Ac­cord­ing to fig­ures from last week, the num­ber of new in­fec­tions in Eu­rope re­mained sta­ble and fell every­where else.

WHO cau­tioned that with many coun­tries drop­ping wide­spread test­ing pro­grams, many in­fec­tions are like­ly be­ing missed and new case num­bers should be in­ter­pret­ed cau­tious­ly.

In re­cent weeks, COVID-19 cas­es inched up­ward across Eu­rope, prompt­ed by the more in­fec­tious BA.2 sub­vari­ant of omi­cron and the re­lax­ation of near­ly all pub­lic health mea­sures.

WHO Eu­rope chief Dr. Hans Kluge said re­stric­tions in nu­mer­ous coun­tries across the con­ti­nent had been lift­ed “bru­tal­ly - from too much to too few,” not­ing that in re­cent days, cas­es were ris­ing sig­nif­i­cant­ly in the U.K., France, Italy and Ger­many.

Last week, British health min­is­ter Sajid Javid said U.K. res­i­dents should brace for a jump in COVID-19 in­fec­tions but that the coun­try was still “in a very good po­si­tion” due to its high vac­ci­na­tion lev­els.

Mean­while, Chi­na’s health au­thor­i­ties this week re­port­ed the first coro­n­avirus deaths in more than a year as the coun­try bat­tles its worst out­break since the coro­n­avirus was de­tect­ed in Wuhan.

The se­mi-au­tonomous city of Hong Kong is al­so en­trenched in a dead­ly wave of COVID-19, and the city of 7 mil­lion has record­ed more deaths than main­land Chi­na dur­ing the pan­dem­ic.

Hong Kong Chief Ex­ec­u­tive Car­rie Lam said this week that au­thor­i­ties would con­sid­er re­lax­ing some of its strict pan­dem­ic mea­sures as cas­es be­gin to fall af­ter weeks of ris­ing cas­es over­loaded hos­pi­tals and ceme­ter­ies.