COVID infections down worldwide but WHO warns of apathy

LONDON (Reuters) – Daily reported coronavirus infections have been on the decline globally for a month and hit their lowest since mid-October on Tuesday, Reuters figures show, but health experts have warned apathy even as vaccines are being rolled out around the world.

Falls in infections and deaths coincide with lockdowns and severe restrictions on gatherings and movements as governments weigh the need to stop successive waves of the pandemic with the need to bring people back to work and children at school.

But optimism about the exit from the crisis has been tempered by new variants of the virus, raising fears about the effectiveness of vaccines.

“Now is not the time to let our guard down,” Maria Van Kerkhove, World Health Organization technical officer on COVID-19, said at a briefing in Geneva.

“… We can’t let ourselves get into a situation where we have cases again.”

COVID-19 has hit some countries much harder than others, although the differences in how infections are counted locally make it impossible to make a perfect comparison from apples to apples.

There were 351,335 new infections reported globally on Tuesday over an average of seven days, the figure rising from 863,737 as of January 7. There were 17,649 deaths on January 26, and 10,957 on February 16.

COVID-19 infections are on the decline in the United States, with 77,883 new infections reported on average every day. That’s 31% of the peak – the highest daily average reported on January 8.

There have been 27,902,387 coronavirus-related infections and 490,795 reported in the United States since the start of the pandemic, the highest numbers in the world.

So far, 85 countries have started vaccinating people against the coronavirus and have administered at least 187,892,000 doses, according to Reuters figures.

Gibraltar, a British overseas territory at the southern end of Spain, leads the world and has delivered enough doses of the vaccine to 40% of its population, assuming each person needs two doses.

((Interactive graph tracking the worldwide spread of the coronavirus: open tmsnrt.rs/2FThSv7 in an external browser))