Iran Press/ America: In its weekly assessment of the pandemic issued on Thursday, the UN health agency said there were 8,700 COVID-19 deaths last week, with a 21 percent jump in the Americas and a 17 percent increase in the Western Pacific.
WHO said coronavirus cases continued to fall, with about 3.2 million new cases reported last week, extending a decline in COVID-19 infections since the peak in January. Still, some regions had significant spikes of infection, with the Middle East and Southeast Asia reporting increases of 58 percent and 33 percent, respectively.
“Because many countries have reduced surveillance and testing, we know this number is under-reported,” WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said earlier this week.
While many rich countries in Europe and North America have mostly dropped their virus restrictions, China’s extreme COVID-19 policies have meant more mass testing, quarantines, and sequestering of anyone who was in contact with a case.
This week, US officials moved closer to authorizing coronavirus vaccines for the youngest children after the Food and Drug Administration’s vaccine advisers gave a thumbs-up to vaccines from Moderna and Pfizer-BioNTech for children under five.
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