Global COVID Cases Up 80 Percent Amid New Subvariant

By Staff, Agencies

The number of new COVID cases reported worldwide rose by 80 percent in the past month, the World Health Organization [WHO] said Friday, days after designating a new “variant of interest.”

In May, the WHO declared that Covid was no longer a global health emergency, but has since warned that the virus was still circulating and mutating, causing occasional spikes in infections, hospitalizations, and deaths.

In its weekly update, the UN agency said nations reported nearly 1.5 million new cases from July 10 to August 6 – an 80 percent increase compared to the previous month. However, the number of deaths fell by 57 percent to 2,500.

The WHO noted that the reported number of cases and deaths do not reflect the true numbers, partly due to countries carrying out far less testing and monitoring than during the earlier stages of the pandemic.

Many of the new cases came in the Western Pacific region, which saw infections jump by 137 percent, the WHO said. Several countries in the Northern Hemisphere, including the United States, United Kingdom, France, and Japan have also seen a recent uptick in cases.

Experts have suggested that summer gatherings and travel, declining immunity, and the new EG.5 subvariant may have all played a role in the increase. More than 17 percent of all reported cases were EG.5 in mid-July, up from 7.6 percent a month before, according to the WHO.