New COVID-19 cases continue to rise globally in past week: WHO

GENEVA, March 31 (Xinhua) -- The World Health Organization (WHO) on Wednesday reported in its weekly epidemiological update that new COVID-19 cases continued to rise for the fifth week in a row, with over 3.8 million new cases reported last week.

According to the update for the week ending March 28, new cases have been spotted in all regions of the world, with specific surges in Southeast Asia, the Western Pacific and Africa, even though Europe and the Americas still make up 80 percent of the numbers.

The new, more contagious COVID-19 variants can be partly blamed for the increase as more and more countries are reporting them, the WHO said.

Furthermore, new deaths also increased for the second consecutive week to over 64,000 last week, up by 5 percent compared to the previous week.

Meanwhile, the WHO reported that 177 countries and regions have started vaccinating, some of them through the COVAX Facility, an international initiative co-led by the WHO and its partners to ensure equitable global access to COVID-19 vaccines.

Globally, there have been to date more than 127.6 million confirmed COVID-19 cases, including over 2.79 million deaths, reported to WHO, according to the latest WHO dashboard on the pandemic.