SOURCE: AS­SO­CI­AT­ED PRESS

GENE­VA (AP) — The num­ber of new coro­n­avirus deaths re­port­ed world­wide fell by 17% in the last week while COVID-19 in­fec­tions rose, re­vers­ing a de­cline in cas­es that first be­gan in Jan­u­ary, ac­cord­ing to the World Health Or­ga­ni­za­tion.

In the U.N. health agency’s week­ly re­port on the pan­dem­ic is­sued late Tues­day, WHO said there were more than 11 mil­lion new COVID-19 in­fec­tions last week - about an 8% rise - and 43,000 new deaths. The num­ber of COVID-19 deaths glob­al­ly has been drop­ping for the past three weeks.

The biggest in­crease in cas­es were seen in the West­ern Pa­cif­ic and Africa, where in­fec­tions rose by 29% and 12% re­spec­tive­ly. Else­where, cas­es dropped by more than 20% in the Mid­dle East, South­east Asia and the Amer­i­c­as. In Eu­rope, cas­es inched up by about 2%.

WHO said those num­bers “should be in­ter­pret­ed with cau­tion.” It not­ed that many coun­tries are chang­ing their COVID-19 test­ing strate­gies as they ex­it the acute phase of the pan­dem­ic, and are test­ing far less than pre­vi­ous­ly, mean­ing that many new cas­es are go­ing un­de­tect­ed.

In re­cent weeks, coun­tries in­clud­ing Swe­den and the U.K. have an­nounced plans to drop wide­spread test­ing for COVID-19, say­ing the mas­sive in­vest­ment is no longer worth the ef­fort. Still, in­fec­tions, hos­pi­tal­iza­tions and deaths have in­creased slight­ly in Britain, dri­ven by the more in­fec­tious omi­cron sub­vari­ant BA.2. An­oth­er con­tribut­ing fac­tor has been the sus­pen­sion of near­ly all COVID-19 pro­to­cols as more peo­ple aban­don masks and gath­er in larg­er num­bers.

WHO not­ed that al­though COVID-19 has been drop­ping in nu­mer­ous re­gions, the West­ern Pa­cif­ic has seen ris­ing num­bers since De­cem­ber.

Chi­na banned most peo­ple from leav­ing a coro­n­avirus-hit north­east­ern province and mo­bi­lized mil­i­tary re­servists Mon­day, as the fast-spread­ing “stealth omi­cron” vari­ant fu­els the coun­try’s biggest out­break since the start of the pan­dem­ic two years ago. Of­fi­cials al­so locked down the south­ern city of Shen­zhen, which has 17.5 mil­lion peo­ple and is a ma­jor tech and fi­nance hub that bor­ders Hong Kong — which it­self has re­port­ed some of the high­est COVID-19 death rates re­cent­ly.