Global COVID-19 cases topped $ 500 million on Thursday, according to Reuters, as Omicron’s highly contagious BA.2 sub-variant is growing in many countries in Europe and Asia.
The rise in BA.2 is blamed for recent jumps in China as well as record infections in Europe, while South Korea leads the world in the average daily number of new cases, accounting for more than 182,000 new infections per day and accounting for one in each four infections worldwide, according to a Reuters analysis.
The new cases are increasing in 20 of the more than 240 countries and territories tracked, including Taiwan, Thailand and Bhutan.
Shanghai is battling the worst COVID-19 outbreak in China since the new coronavirus first appeared in Wuhan in late 2019, with nearly 25,000 new local cases reported, although the city’s quarantine policy has been criticized for separating children from their parents and placing asymptomatic cases among those with symptoms.
“Prevention and control of the epidemic in Shanghai is at the most difficult and critical stage,” said Wu Qianyu, a municipal health commission official, at a briefing.
Various countries are still affected
In Canada, federal officials said the recent growth in Canada was due to the Omicron option and its BA.2 sub-option.
Some European countries are now seeing a slower rise in new cases or even a decline, but the region still reports more than a million cases every two days, according to Reuters.
In Germany, the seven-day average for new infections has fallen to now close to 60% of its previous peak in late March. New cases are also declining in the United Kingdom and Italy, while remaining stable in France.
Overall, COVID-19 cases in the United States fell sharply after reaching record highs in January, but the resumption of cases in parts of Asia and Europe has raised fears that a new wave may follow in the United States.
WATCH Shanghai eases 2-week blockade of COVID-19:
Shanghai eases 2-week blockade of COVID-19
Officials in Shanghai are allowing some people to get out of a two-week blockade aimed at stopping the spread of COVID-19. Residents complain that they do not have access to food and medicine. 4:06
The U.S. National Public Health Agency said Monday that Omicron’s BA.2 sub-option is estimated to represent nearly three out of four coronavirus variants in the country.
Option BA.2 now accounts for about 86% of all sequenced cases worldwide, according to the World Health Organization. It is known to be more portable than Omicron BA.1 and BA.1.1 sub-variants. However, evidence to date suggests that BA.2 is less likely to cause severe disease.
65% of the world’s population has at least 1 dose of vaccine
Scientists continue to emphasize that vaccines are crucial to avoid the devastation that the virus can cause.
Approximately 65% of the world’s population has received at least one dose of the COVID vaccine, although only about 15% of people in low-income countries have received at least one dose, according to Our World in Data.
While cases in Europe and Asia have recently erupted, the United States still has the highest total number of COVID-19s since the pandemic of 80.41 million, followed by India with 43.04 million and Brazil with 30.14 million. .
As of 2020, about 37% of COVID-19 cases worldwide are in Europe, 21% in Asia and 17% in North America.
About 6.5 million people have lost their lives to COVID-19 since the pandemic. The United States has the highest number of deaths, followed by Russia, Brazil and India.
Russia has overtaken Brazil to have the second-highest number of COVID-19 deaths in the world, according to data from Russia’s State Statistics Service and Reuters estimates on Thursday.
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