SOURCE: AS­SO­CI­AT­ED PRESS

BERLIN (AP) — The World Health Or­ga­ni­za­tion says the num­ber of COVID-19 cas­es record­ed world­wide in­creased by 11% last week com­pared with the pre­vi­ous week, with the biggest in­crease in the Amer­i­c­as. The gain fol­lowed a grad­ual in­crease since Oc­to­ber.

The U.N. health agency said in its week­ly epi­demi­o­log­i­cal re­port re­leased late Tues­day that there were near­ly 4.99 mil­lion new­ly re­port­ed cas­es around the world from Dec. 20-26.

Eu­rope ac­count­ed for more than half the to­tal, with 2.84 mil­lion, though that amount­ed to on­ly a 3% in­crease over the pre­vi­ous week. It al­so had the high­est in­fec­tion rate of any re­gion, with 304.6 new cas­es per 100,000 res­i­dents.

WHO said that new cas­es in the Amer­i­c­as were up 39% to near­ly 1.48 mil­lion, and the re­gion had the sec­ond-high­est in­fec­tion rate with 144.4 new cas­es per 100,000 res­i­dents. The U.S. alone saw more than 1.18 mil­lion cas­es, a 34% in­crease.

Re­port­ed new cas­es in Africa were up 7% to near­ly 275,000.

The agency said that “the over­all risk re­lat­ed to the new vari­ant … omi­cron re­mains very high.” It cit­ed “con­sis­tent ev­i­dence” that it has a growth ad­van­tage over the delta vari­ant, which re­mains dom­i­nant in parts of the world.

It not­ed that a de­cline in case in­ci­dence has been seen in South Africa, and that ear­ly da­ta from that coun­try, the U.K. and Den­mark sug­gest a re­duced risk of hos­pi­tal­iza­tion with omi­cron. But it said that more da­ta is need­ed “to un­der­stand the clin­i­cal mark­ers of sever­i­ty in­clud­ing the use of oxy­gen, me­chan­i­cal ven­ti­la­tion and death, and how sever­i­ty may be im­pact­ed by vac­ci­na­tion and/or pri­or … in­fec­tion.”

WHO said that the num­ber of new­ly re­port­ed deaths world­wide last week was down 4% to 44,680.