India reports 18% decrease in new COVID-19 cases, 13% decrease in number of deaths during October 11-17 week: WHO

India reported an 18% decrease in the new COVID-19 cases along with a 13% decline in the number of deaths during the week of October 11 to 17, the World Health Organization (WHO) has said, highlighting that all the regions globally, except the European Region, reported a fall in new weekly cases of the deadly virus.

The COVID-19 Weekly Epidemiological Update, released by the World Health Organization on October 19, said that with just over 2.7 million new cases and over 46,000 new deaths reported during the week of October 11 to 17, the global number of new cases and deaths remained similar to that of the previous week.

Apart from the European Region, which reported a 7% increase in the number of new weekly cases when compared to the previous week, all the other regions reported declines in new weekly cases.

The update said that the largest decrease in new weekly cases was reported from the African Region (18%), followed by the Western Pacific Region (16%). The African Region also reported the largest decline in weekly deaths (25%) followed by the South-East Asia and Eastern Mediterranean Regions with 19% and 8% declines, respectively.

The cumulative number of confirmed cases reported globally is now over 240 million and the cumulative number of deaths is just under 4.9 million.

The highest numbers of new cases were reported from the United States of America (582,707 new cases; 11% decrease), the United Kingdom (283,756 new cases; 14% increase), Russia (217,322 new cases; 15% increase), Turkey ( 213,981 new cases; similar to the number reported in the previous week) and India (114,244 new cases; 18% decrease).

The update said that declining trends continued in the South-East Asia Region, with just under 215,000 new cases and over 2,900 new deaths reported, a decrease of 13% and 19% respectively as compared to the previous week.

All countries in the region reported a decline in new cases and deaths this week, apart from Thailand that reported a similar number of cases as compared to the previous week.

While India reported the highest numbers of new cases at 114,244, they were still an 18% decrease over the previous week, Thailand (72,817 new cases) and Myanmar (9202 new cases) also reported high numbers of new cases in the South-East Asia Region.

In the region, the highest numbers of new deaths were reported from India (1,535 new deaths; a 13% decrease), Thailand (582 new deaths; a 14% decrease), and Indonesia (301 new deaths; a 37% decrease).

The regions reporting the highest weekly case incidence rates per 100,000 population were the European Region and the Region of the Americas and the same two regions reported the highest weekly incidence in deaths, of 1.9 and 1.8 per 100 000 population, respectively.

The update noted that globally, three additional countries, territories or areas reported cases with Variants of Concern in the past week. As of October 19, cases of Alpha variant have been reported from 196 countries, Beta variant from 145 countries, Gamma variant from 99 countries, and Delta variant from 193 countries across all six WHO regions.

“The current global genetic epidemiology is characterized by a predominance of Delta variant, with decreasing prevalence of other variants among SARS-CoV-2 sequences submitted to publicly available datasets.

“Given its higher transmissibility, Delta has outcompeted other variants, including other VOCs, in many countries. Important sub-regional and country-level variation, however, continues to be observed; most notably within some South American countries, where the progression of the Delta variant has been more gradual than that observed in other regions, and other variants (eg Gamma, Mu) still contribute a large proportion of sequence samples,” the update said.