Covid-19 cases rising in SE Asia, China, Europe, U.S. as another wave looms large

While India is settling back to normalcy after a prolonged third wave of Covid-19 pandemic, alarm bells are again ringing as China and many South East Asian countries, Europe and the U.S. are reporting resurgence of the virus, triggering fears of another wave of the pandemic across the globe.

China is witnessing its worst ever crisis due to the pandemic since the beginning of the disease in Wuhan in early 2020 as many cities with over 30 million people are now under lockdown. The National Health Commission of China today said the Chinese mainland had reported 16,524 cases of 'imported confirmed infections' and no deaths as of March 15.

"The National Health Commission (NHC) had received reports of 122,456 confirmed cases and 4,636 deaths in 31 provincial-level regions and the Xinjiang Production and Construction Corps on the Chinese mainland, and in all 104,040 patients had been cured and discharged from hospital. There still remain 13,780 confirmed cases," said today's medical bulletin from China's NHC.

The national health authority also said 266,887 cases are in Hong Kong (4,568 had died and 29,223 had been cured and discharged from hospital), 82 in Macau (79 had been cured and discharged from hospital) and 21,402 in Taiwan (853 had died and 13,742 had been cured and discharged from hospital). According to the NHC, the main variant spreading in many parts of China is the fast spreading stealth Omicron.

Meanwhile, the World Health Organisation (WHO) said after a consistent decrease in the number of new Covid-19 cases reported globally on a weekly basis since the end of January 2022, during the week ending March 13, the number of new weekly cases has increased by 8% as compared to the previous week.

The highest numbers of new cases were reported from the Republic of Korea, Vietnam, Germany, Netherlands and France. The highest numbers of new deaths were reported from the U.S. (9,078 new deaths), the Russian Federation (4,530), Brazil (3,301), Indonesia (1,994) and China (1,955). Across the six WHO regions, over 11 million new cases and just over 43,000 new deaths were reported. As of March 13, 2022, over 455 million confirmed cases and over 6 million deaths have been reported globally. At the regional level, the Western Pacific Region, the African Region and the European Region reported 29%, 12% and 2% increase in new weekly cases, respectively, as compared with the previous week.

The number of new weekly deaths decreased globally by 17%. At the regional level, the Western Pacific Region reported an increase in new weekly deaths (+12%), while decreases were reported by the Eastern Mediterranean Region (-49%), the African Region (-41%), Europe Region (-23%), the Region of the Americas and South-East Asia Region (both -15%).

Currently India has only 32,811 active cases, despite conducting 7,52,818 tests yesterday. India has also done over 180 crore vaccinations.