London, Feb. 9 (BNA): Global COVID-19 cases surpassed 400 million on Wednesday, according to a Reuters tally, as the highly contagious variant Omicron dominates the outbreak, pushing health systems in many countries to the brink of capacity.
The Omicron variant, which dominates the increase worldwide, accounts for nearly all new cases reported per day, Reuters reports.
While cases are starting to stabilize in many countries, more than 2 million cases It is still reported on average every day.
Deaths, which tend to lag, have increased by 70% in the past five weeks based on the seven-day average.
While preliminary evidence from many countries has shown that Omicron is milder than previous variants, a large volume of cases could overburden healthcare systems globally.
It took more than a month for Covid-19 cases to reach 400 million out of 300 million, compared with five months for cases to reach 300 million out of 200 million, according to a Reuters tally. The pandemic has killed more than 6 million people worldwide.
The top five countries that reported the most cases for an average of seven days — the United States, France, Germany, Russia and Brazil — account for nearly 37% of all new cases reported worldwide, according to a Reuters analysis.
The United States leads the world in the most reported cases each day, with 1 million new cases reported in the country every three days. The number of cases and hospitalizations in the country is slowing from its peak in January this year, according to a Reuters analysis. On Friday, the country passed 900,000 associated deaths.
In France, new infections for seven days average more than 210,000 cases per day, adding about one million new cases every five days. The cumulative total of confirmed COVID cases in France since the start of the pandemic exceeded 20 million last Thursday.
About half of all new infections reported worldwide have been from countries in Europe, with 21 countries still at the peak of their infection curve. The region has reported more than 131 million cases and more than 2 million COVID-related deaths since the pandemic began.
Although Europe reports 1 million new cases nearly every day, some countries are gradually lifting restrictions as the outbreak locally subsides. Spain has scrapped a requirement for people to wear masks outdoors, widening the rollback of restrictions as infections slowly recede in the country.
Greece on Monday began allowing tourists with a European vaccination certificate to enter the country without having to show a negative coronavirus test.
Last Friday, India’s death toll from COVID-19 topped 500,000, a level that many health experts say was breached last year, but which has been obscured by inaccurate surveys and unaccounted deaths. An estimated 3 million people have died of COVID-19 in the South Asian country as of mid-2021, according to a study published in Science and based on three different databases.
The most common variant of the Omicron variant, BA.1, accounts for 98.8% of sequence cases submitted to the public virus tracking database GISAID as of January 25. But many countries have reported recent increases in the variant known as BA.2, according to the World Health Organization.
Nearly 62% of the world’s population has received at least one dose of the COVID vaccine, while only 11% of people in low-income countries have received at least one dose, according to figures from Our World in Data.
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