COPENHAGEN, June 26 (NNN-AGENCIES) — Europe has seen a surge of COVID-19 cases since countries began easing restrictions aimed at curbing the spread of the potentially fatal virus, the World Health Organization said Thursday.
“Last week, Europe saw an increase in weekly cases for the first time in months,” the WHO’s regional director for Europe Hans Kluge told reporters.
“Thirty countries have seen increases in new cumulative cases over the past two weeks. In 11 of these countries, accelerated transmission has led to very significant resurgence that if left unchecked will push health systems to the brink once again in Europe,” he warned.
Meanwhile, the number of cases in Belarus increased by 437 in the past 24 hours, bringing the total to 60,382, while five more patients died from virus-related causes, the national health ministry said via its Telegram channel.
“60,382 people with positive tests for coronavirus were registered. Since the infection started spreading in the country, 367 patients with underlying health conditions and coronavirus infection died,” the ministry noted.
According to the official data, 41,448 people recovered from COVID-19 and were discharged (1,312 in the past 24 hours). Overall, the country carried out 919,139 coronavirus tests.
Local authorities never imposed any lockdown measures, the country still holds mass events and is now engaged in a presidential election campaign, the vote will take place on August 9.
This week, Belarus surpassed Spain in the number of identified cases per every 1 million people and is now ranked second in Europe among countries with populations over 100,000.
In late December 2019, Chinese officials notified the World Health Organization (WHO) about the outbreak of a previously unknown pneumonia in the city of Wuhan, in central China. Since then, cases of the novel coronavirus – named COVID-19 by the WHO – have been reported in every corner of the globe.
On March 11, 2020, the WHO declared the coronavirus outbreak a pandemic. According to the latest statistics, over 9,542,400 people have been infected worldwide and more than 485,200 deaths have been reported. In addition, so far, over 5,186,600 individuals have recovered from the illness across the globe. — NNN-AGENCIES
