According to the EU Health Agency, several European countries – France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Poland, Belgium and Austria – have also recorded increased infections.
The surge in new cases comes as the World Health Organization (WHO) on Saturday issued a warning against a new ‘XE’ mutant variant of Omicron, which could be more transmissible than any other strain. Which Covid-19 has been seen before.
‘XE’ is a mutated hybrid of two earlier versions of the Omicron variant, BA.1 and BA.2, which have spread worldwide.
According to reports, the new variant was 10% more transmissible than the subvariant BA.2, which was already the most contagious. While the XE makes up only a small fraction of the cases, its extreme transmission capacity could mean it will become the most dominant vehicle in the near future.
A recent WHO report states: “Recombinant XE (BA.1-BA.2), was first detected in the UK on 19 January and less than 600 sequences have been reported and confirmed. received since then.
“Initial estimates suggest a community growth rate advantage of 10% over BA.2, however, this finding requires further confirmation,” it added.
The global health authority in its latest weekly Epidemiological Update also said that more than 10 million new cases have been reported – a 14% drop from the previous week. However, during the same time period, the number of new weekly deaths increased by 43% to more than 45,000 new deaths.
The highest number of new weekly cases were reported from South Korea (2,442,195), Germany (1,576,261), Vietnam (1,127,716), France (845,119) and Italy (503,932), while the number of deaths The highest new weekly deaths were reported from Chile (11,858), US (5,367), India (4,525), Russia (2,859) and South Korea (2,471).
However, the WHO warned that these trends should be interpreted “with caution as some countries are gradually changing their Covid-19 testing strategies”.
Despite the overall decline in Covid testing rates observed in some counties, “weekly new cases increased again in early to mid-March, indicating that the virus is currently circulating at very low levels.” high”.
The WHO says the dramatic drop in testing for SARS-CoV-2 in some countries is worrisome because data is becoming less representative, less timely and less robust.
This prevents our collective ability to track where the virus is, how it spreads and how it is evolving: information and analysis remains critical to effectively ending the acute phase of the pandemic.”
It warns that “reducing inspection, unless judiciously implemented as part of a strategy to maintain close surveillance, could affect countries’ ability to identify identify cases and allow prompt treatment or isolation and implementation of other necessary control measures, given the consequential risk of the increasing spread of SARS-CoV-2”.
Source: IANS
