GENEVA, Jan 7 (NNN-PRENSA LATINA) — Covid-19 infections increased by 52% worldwide in four weeks and trend is expected to continue to grow during northern winter, the World Health Organization (WHO) warned.
WHO´s latest report showed a sharp increase of 850,000 new cases of coronavirus compared to previous 28 days.
WHO detailed that from Nov 13 to Dec 10, over 118,000 hospitalizations and over 1,600 new admissions at ICUs were reported, with an overall surge of 23% and 51%, respectively.
Between Nov 20 and Dec 17, 2023, as many as 105 nations documented Covid-19 cases and 50 of them reported Covid-19 deaths.
Most of infections were caused by the new JN.1 strain, which WHO is currently watching with special attention and declared a “variant of concern” past Dec 18 due to its rapid increase in prevalence in recent weeks.
According to available reports, the JN.1 variant was first detected in the United States and then spread to dozens of countries, after evolving from the Omicron variant, which was linked to a peak in Covid-19 infections in 2022.
As of Dec 17, 2023, over 772 million confirmed cases and nearly seven million deaths had been documented worldwide since the first patient detected in November 2019. — NNN-PRENSA LATINA
