Covid, declining infections in the world: Italy second in Europe for deaths

The number of new weekly Covid infections in the world continues to drop. As well as the number of deaths, with Italy, however, which ranks second in Europe for deaths. The downward trend has continued since the peak of January 2022 and led to record, in the week from May 30 to June 5, over 3 million cases, with a reduction of 12% compared to the previous week. The number of deaths reported in 7 days also continues to decline: there were over 7,600 in the last week monitored by the World Health Organization (WHO) and a decrease of 22% compared to last week. But Italy continues to be among the countries that report more deaths per week: 380, albeit down by 39%, making it the fifth country for deaths in 7 days worldwide and the second in the European region, after Russia. . This is the picture traced by the WHO update, which also raises the global counter of Sars-CoV-2: as of June 5, there were a total of over 529 million confirmed cases since the beginning of the pandemic and over 6 million deaths worldwide. Returning to the last week, the new weekly infections increased in the Eastern Mediterranean region (+ 19%) and in Southeast Asia (+ 1%), while they decreased in the other 4 WHO regions. The number of weekly deaths increased only in the Western Pacific region (+ 7%), while decreasing trends were observed in the other 5 WHO regions. These trends, however, the UN Health Agency reiterates, “should be interpreted with caution since several countries are progressively changing testing strategies, with a consequent reduction in the overall number of swabs performed for the diagnosis of Covid and, in chain, lower number of cases detected “. (continued) On the contagion front, at the national level, the United States marks the highest number this week, with 657,268 new cases, albeit down by 11% compared to the previous 7 days. Followed by China with 528,432 new cases (-8%), Australia (221,935; -25%), Brazil (216,334; + 36%) and Germany (215,955 new cases; + 16%). The United States also has the highest number of deaths in 7 days (1,703, -33%). Behind them are China (910, + 57%), Brazil (652, -21%), Russia (565, -7%) and Italy (whose figure is less than 1 new death per 100,000 inhabitants). Within the European region, the number of new cases has continued to decrease since mid-March 2022, with over 744 thousand infections per week, down by 18% compared to the previous 7 days. Six countries in the area (10%) recorded increases of 20% or more in weekly infections: Monaco (+ 124%), Uzbekistan (+ 40%) and Luxembourg (+ 32%). Germany, followed by France and Portugal, have the highest numbers of new cases in the region. As for the weekly deaths, over 2 thousand, they are down by 35% compared to the previous week. Russia, Italy and France are the countries with the highest data.