With 362,000 infections registered daily this week, the indicator continues its decline that began just over a month ago, according to an AFP balance as of Thursday. New infections continue to decline (-12% this week) from a record 743,000 new daily cases between January 5 and 11.

Since the peak in early January, new contamination worldwide has been cut in half (-51%).

This week, only the Middle East saw an acceleration of contagion (+ 11%). All other regions experienced slowdowns: -28% in the United States / Canada, -9% in Africa, Asia and Europe, and -7% in Latin America / Caribbean.

The virus practically does not circulate in Oceania (13 cases a day).

This week, the largest decrease was observed in Portugal (-51%, 2,100 new cases per day), followed by Bolivia (-41%, 800 new daily cases), Spain (-37%, 11,500), the United States (-28%, 72,800) and Colombia (-26%, 4,700).

In the United States, new daily cases were divided by three from the peak seen in the week of January 5-11. The drop seen in South Africa is more impressive, as contaminations (1,980 daily cases this week) were divided by 10 in the period.

Iraq, the country with the most contagious British variant, is for the second week in a row the country where the epidemic is accelerating the most (+ 62%, 2,900 new cases per day). They are followed by Jordan (+ 44%, 2,100), Hungary (+ 23%, 1,700), Poland (+ 18%, 6,300) and Austria (+ 15%, 1,500).

Despite a sharp decrease (-28%), the United States continues to be the country with the highest number of new contaminations this week, with 72,800 new cases daily, ahead of Brazil (45,200, stable) and France (18,600, - two%).

DEATHS

The United States recorded the highest number of deaths in the past week (an average of 2,566 per day), followed by Brazil (1,037), Mexico (982), the United Kingdom (551) and Russia (463).

The number of diagnosed cases reflects no more than a fraction of the actual number of infections, and cross-country comparisons should be viewed with caution, as testing policies differ from country to country.