The Covid-19 deaths are going up, but the number of new cases is declining globally, WHO report

The Omicron variant of the Covid-19 virus that hit this winter caused a lot of problems for every single country including America, the country with one of the highest vaccination rates so far. According to the data provided by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, more than 255 million Americans have already received at least one dose of the available vaccines, while 217.5 million are considered fully vaccinated representing 65.5% of the American population.

As per the same data, more than 97 million people decided to get their third, booster dose of the vaccines obtaining what is known to be the best possible immunity and protection against the virus. While some groups of people are now eligible for fourth dose, also known as second booster dose, the number of cases continues the declining trend in new cases. Per New York Times Covid-tracker, less than 26,000 new cases were added in the statistics nationwide on Tuesday, March 29.

The same declining trend is also seen in majority of the countries worldwide, but the number of new Covid-19 deaths is on the rise lately and according to the World Health Organization report, there are 40% more corona-driven deaths this week compared to the last week. However, WHO also noted that those numbers might be a result due to some changes in how COVID-19 deaths were reported across the Americas and by newly adjusted figures from India.

The weekly WHO report was issued on Wednesday and WHO confirmed that cases are declining in every single part of the world since last week. The week before, a 23% declining trend in Covid-19 deaths was reported, but this week more than 45,000 deaths, compared to the 33,000 last week, were reported along with more than 10 million new positive cases.

Some countries like Chile and United States altered how they define COVID-19 deaths and that is considered to be one of the major reasons for the spike in deaths this week. The other major reason is that more than 4,000 deaths from Maharashtra state in India that initially weren’t included among the COVID-19 death toll were added last week, according to WHO.

“Data are becoming progressively less representative, less timely and less robust,” WHO said. “This inhibits our collective ability to track where the virus is, how it is spreading and how it is evolving: information and analyses that remain critical to effectively end the acute phase of the pandemic.”

WHO is concerned after dozens of countries decided to cut free and regular testing claiming such decisions might undermine everything we have done so far since the start of the pandemic more than two years ago. In addition, WHO said not having real-time data will prevent countries to respond quickly and avoid new waves.

Unlike majority of the counties around the world, China locked down Shanghai this week to try to curb an omicron outbreak that has caused the country’s biggest wave of disease since the virus was first detected in the Chinese city of Wuhan in 2019.

On Tuesday, American regulators announced they are officially allowing second booster dose for people over the age of 50 in an effort to further improve their protection against the virus. Those unvaccinated still remain the most exposed to the virus and with the highest risk of developing severe condition, hospitalization or death.