Online Desk:
The overall number of Covid cases has now crossed 245 million amid the global race to vaccinate masses against the infectious disease.
According to Johns Hopkins University (JHU), the total case count mounted to 245,493,444 while the death tally from the virus reached 4,979,940 Friday morning.
The US has recorded 45,825,983 cases to date and more than 743,358 people have died so far from the virus in the country, as per the university data.
The United States tallied the largest number of new cases over the last seven days — nearly 513,000 new cases, though that was a 12% drop from the previous week — and over 11,600 deaths, which was about the same number as the previous week, the World Health Organization (WHO) said.
Brazil, which has been experiencing a new wave of cases since January, registered 21,781,436 cases so far, while its Covid death toll rose to 607,125.
India’s Covid-19 tally rose to 34,245,530 on Thursday, as 14,323 new cases were registered in 24 hours across the country, according to the federal health ministry.
Besides, 803 deaths due to the pandemic since Wednesday morning took the total death toll to 457,221.
However, Europe stood out as the only major region worldwide to report an increase in both coronavirus cases and deaths over the past week, the UN health agency said.
The World Health Organization said new Covid-19 cases in its 53-country European region, which stretches as far east as the former Soviet republics in Central Asia, recorded an 18% increase in corona cases over the last week — a fourth straight weekly increase for the area, reports AP.
In WHO’s weekly epidemiological report on Covid-19, Europe also saw a 14% increase in virus-related deaths. That amounted to more than 1.6 million new cases and over 21,000 new deaths.
Meanwhile, Russia is reporting an increasing number of coronavirus infections and Covid deaths as the country approaches a week of non-working days aimed at stemming the surge in cases.
Russia has reported 36,582 new Covid-19 cases over the past 24 hours, taking the nationwide tally to 8,352,601, the official monitoring and response center said on Wednesday. The nationwide death toll grew by 1,123, the highest daily rise since the start of the pandemic, to 233,898.
