Covid-19: ninth wave of the pandemic

3.9 million new cases were counted between 7 and 13 December, compared with approximately 3.6 million the previous week, representing an increase of 8.3%. This is the fifth consecutive week of rising infections, a development that is all the more noteworthy as all regions reported an increase in weekly cases, with the exception of Africa, which reported a fall of 17%. North America stood out with a markedly higher increase (25%), followed by South America (13%), Europe (6%) and Asia (2%) (figure 1). Asia alone accounted for 43.6% of the 3.9 million new cases around the world, with 1.7 million infections.

On a weekly basis, Japan once again recorded the highest number of new cases (931,313, +9% compared to the previous week), followed by the United States (505,152, +26%), France (480,713, +16%), South Korea (472,954, +11%), Brazil (242,511, +15%), Germany (226,241, +9%), Australia (123,488, +8%) and Hong Kong (94,115, +35%). In China (183,960, -35%), Italy (165,971, -37%) and Taiwan (114,430, -2%), the number of new cases fell compared to the previous week, but they remain at a high level.

Vaccination coverage also continues to increase, but at a progressively slower rate. To date, 13 billion doses of vaccine have been administered worldwide since the start of the campaigns in Q4 2020, including 2.65 billion booster doses. As a consequence, almost 68.6% of the global population have received at least one dose of vaccine (figure 2).