GENEVA (AP) – A World Health Organization expert on coronavirus pandemic said Monday that the global weekly death toll from COVID-19 is rising again, a “worrying sign” after nearly six weeks of falls .
Maria Van Kerkhove, chief technician of COVID-19 at the UN health agency, said growth followed a fifth consecutive week of confirmed cases rising worldwide. He said the number of reported cases increased in four of the six WHO regions, although there were significant variations in each region.
“In the last week, cases have increased by 8% percent,” Van Kerkhove told reporters. “In Europe, that’s 12%, and that’s driven by several countries.”
The increase is due in part to the spread of a variant that first emerged in Britain and is now circulating in many other places, including Eastern Europe, he said.
Southeast Asia saw a 49% weekly jump in confirmed cases, while the WHO’s Western Pacific region reported a 29% increase, mostly fueled by the Philippines, Van Kerkhove said. In the Eastern Mediterranean region, cases increased by 8%, while the number of cases reported in the Americas and Africa decreased.
“I want to mention that it had been about six weeks in which we observed decreases in deaths,” Van Kerkhove said. “And last week, we started to see a slight increase in deaths around the world, and that’s to be expected if we want to see growing cases. But that’s also a worrying sign.”
The head of WHO emergencies, Dr. Michael Ryan, acknowledged the urgency of the public in many places to get out of pandemic restrictions. Ryan insisted that any relaxation should coincide with measures such as strict case surveillance and high levels of vaccination, but said vaccines alone would not be enough.
“I’m afraid we’re all trying to catch the straws. We are trying to find the golden solution: “So we get enough vaccine and we get enough vaccine for people and that will take care of it,” he said. “I’m sorry, it’s not.”