Source: As­so­ci­at­ed Press 

GENE­VA (AP) — The num­ber of new coro­n­avirus cas­es re­port­ed world­wide has con­tin­ued to fall ex­cept in the Amer­i­c­as and Africa, the World Health Or­ga­ni­za­tion said in its lat­est as­sess­ment of the pan­dem­ic. 

In its week­ly pan­dem­ic re­port re­leased late Wednes­day, the U.N. health agency said about 3.5 mil­lion new cas­es and more than 25,000 deaths were re­port­ed glob­al­ly, which re­spec­tive­ly rep­re­sent de­creas­es of 12% and 25%. 

The down­ward trend in re­port­ed in­fec­tions be­gan in March, al­though many coun­tries have dis­man­tled their wide­spread test­ing and sur­veil­lance pro­grams, mak­ing an ac­cu­rate count of cas­es ex­treme­ly dif­fi­cult. 

WHO said there were on­ly two re­gions where re­port­ed COVID-19 in­fec­tions in­creased: the Amer­i­c­as, by 14%, and Africa, by 12%. Cas­es re­mained sta­ble in the West­ern Pa­cif­ic and fell every­where else, the agency said. 

WHO Di­rec­tor-Gen­er­al Tedros Ad­hanom Ghe­breye­sus warned dur­ing a press brief­ing this week that “the ris­ing cas­es in more than 50 coun­tries high­lights the volatil­i­ty of this virus.” 

Tedros said COVID-19 vari­ants, in­clud­ing mu­tat­ed ver­sions of the high­ly in­fec­tious omi­cron, are dri­ving a resur­gence of COVID-19 in sev­er­al coun­tries, in­clud­ing South Africa, which was the first to iden­ti­fy omi­cron in No­vem­ber. 

He said rel­a­tive­ly high rates of pop­u­la­tion im­mu­ni­ty are pre­vent­ing a spike in hos­pi­tal­iza­tions and deaths but cau­tioned that “this is not guar­an­teed for places where vac­ci­na­tion lev­els are low.” On­ly about 16% of peo­ple in poor­er coun­tries have been im­mu­nized against COVID-19. 

WHO’s Africa of­fice said Thurs­day that cas­es in South Africa have quadru­pled in the last three weeks and COVID-19 deaths have dou­bled. WHO said that so far, hos­pi­tal­iza­tions were on­ly about 20% of what was seen dur­ing the last in­fec­tion wave in De­cem­ber. 

The agency not­ed that the most con­cern­ing omi­cron sub­vari­ants are BA.4 and BA.5, due to their large num­ber of mu­ta­tions and un­cer­tain­ty as to how they might af­fect im­mu­ni­ty. COVID-19 cas­es in Namib­ia and Eswa­ti­ni, which bor­der South Africa, al­so re­port­ed 50% more cas­es in the past two weeks. 

“This uptick in cas­es is an ear­ly warn­ing sign which we are close­ly mon­i­tor­ing,” said Ab­dou Salam Gu­eye, WHO Africa’s emer­gen­cies chief. 

WHO’s re­port not­ed that some of the biggest jumps in COVID-19 cas­es were seen in Chi­na, which saw a 145% rise in the last week. 

Ear­li­er this week, Chi­nese au­thor­i­ties dou­bled down on pan­dem­ic re­stric­tions in Shang­hai af­ter a brief pe­ri­od of loos­en­ing up. The move frus­trat­ed res­i­dents who were hop­ing a more than month­long lock­down was fi­nal­ly eas­ing af­ter com­plaints of food short­ages and quar­an­tines where some peo­ple were forced to sur­ren­der their house keys. 

WHO’s Tedros said Tues­day he didn’t think Chi­na’s “ze­ro-COVID” strat­e­gy was sus­tain­able, “con­sid­er­ing the be­hav­iour of the virus now and what we an­tic­i­pate in the fu­ture.” 

On Thurs­day, North Ko­rea an­nounced its first coro­n­avirus out­break and im­posed a na­tion­wide lock­down. The size of the out­break wasn’t im­me­di­ate­ly known, but it could have se­ri­ous con­se­quences be­cause the coun­try has a poor health care sys­tem and its 26 mil­lion peo­ple are be­lieved to be most­ly un­vac­ci­nat­ed.