The World Health Organization says a record 9.5 million COVID-19 cases were tallied over the last week as the Omicron variant of the coronavirus swept the planet, a 71 per cent increase from the previous seven-day period that the UN health agency likened to a tsunami.

“Last week, the highest number of COVID-19 cases were reported so far in the pandemic,” WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said. He said the WHO was certain it was an underestimate due to a delay in testing around the year-end vacation.

In its weekly report on the pandemic, the company mentioned the weekly tally mounted to 9,520,488 new instances with 41,178 deaths recorded final week in comparison with 44,680 within the week earlier than that.

WHO officers have lengthy cited a lag between case counts and deaths, with adjustments within the loss of life counts typically trailing about two weeks behind the evolution of case counts. However, they’ve additionally famous that for a number of causes together with rising vaccination charges in some locations and indicators that Omicron impacts the nostril and throat greater than the lungs, Omicron has not appeared as lethal because of the Delta variant that preceded it.