According to the World Health Organization (WHO), in the past week from 20 – 26 September 2021, the number of COVID-19 cases reported globally declined by 10% from over 3.6 million cases recorded in the previous week to over 3.3 million new cases.
This reflects a three-week consecutive decline in global new cases.
In the same vein, global new deaths were reported to be over 55,000 still representing a decrease of 10% compared to the previous week of over 60,000 cases.
Regional Summary
The data for each region were as follows: The largest decrease in new weekly cases was reported from the Eastern Mediterranean Region (17%), followed by the Western Pacific Region (15%), the Region of the Americas (14%), the African Region (12%) and the South-East Asia Region (10%); while weekly cases in the European Region were similar to the previous week.
The cumulative number of confirmed cases reported globally is now over 231 million and the cumulative number of deaths is more than 4.7 million.
The number of new weekly deaths reported showed a large decline for all regions except for the European Region, which reported a similar number of weekly deaths compared to the previous week, while the African Region reported a slight increase (5%). The largest decline in weekly deaths was reported from the Western Pacific Region, with a 24% decline as compared to the previous week.
Africa Summary
In Africa, however, the region reported over 87,000 new cases and over 2500 new deaths, which represented a 12% decrease and a 5% increase, respectively when compared to the previous week.
In the region, the number of weekly cases recorded has been on a continuous decline for almost three months, since the latest peak in early July, however, weekly deaths remained on an increase.
During the week under review, 14 of the 49 African countries in the region reported an increase of 17 to 61% in new cases, highlighting the heterogeneity of trends in the Region.
The highest numbers of new cases were reported from the United Republic of Tanzania with 24,307 new cases, South Africa with 15,627 new cases; and Ethiopia with 8,842 new cases. The highest numbers of new deaths were reported from South Africa with 885 new deaths, the United Republic of Tanzania with 664 new deaths, and Ethiopia with 254 new deaths.
During the same week, the World Health Organization (WHO) expanded the capacity for Integrated Disease Surveillance and Response (IDSR) in the African Region.
