Over 12 million people contracted the novel coronavirus infection worldwide over the past week, more than 32,000 patients died, the World Health Organization (WHO) reported on Wednesday.
The number of new infections increased by 7%, while the number of fatalities declined by 23% compared to the previous seven-day period.
According to the WHO COVID-19 Weekly Epidemiological Update, a total of 12,384,300 new cases and 32,959 deaths were reported to the global organization on March 14-20.
The growth in cases was reported in the Western Pacific region (up 21%). In Europe, which accounts for 42% of all new cases registered worldwide in the past week, the case count remained at the same level. Case incidence declined In the remaining four global WHO regions, most noticeably in Eastern Mediterranean (down 41%).
Mortality grew in the Western Pacific region (up 5%) and declined in all the other WHO regions, including America (down 42%), Eastern Mediterranean (down 38%), Africa (down 19%) and Europe (down 15%).
The biggest number of infections was reported by the Republic of Korea (2,817,214), followed by Vietnam (1,888,694), Germany (1,538,666), France (582,344) and Australia (513,388). Russia accounts for the biggest number of fatalities in the past seven days (3,681), followed by the United States (3,612), Brazil (2,242), the Republic of Korea (2,033) and China (1,921).
As of 19:27 Moscow time on March 22, the WHO cumulative global statistics indicated 470,839,745 cases and 6,092,933 fatalities registered worldwide since the start of the pandemic. The number of new cases grew by 1,244,012 in the past day, while fatalities increased by 14,865.
