Weekly epidemiological update on COVID-19 - 3 August 2021

Globally, weekly cases have been increasing for more than a month, with over 4 million cases reported in the past week. An average of over 570 000 cases were reported each day over the past week as compared to a little over     540 000 cases reported daily the week before. This increasing trend is largely attributed to substantial increases in the Eastern Mediterranean and the Western Pacific Regions which reported a 37% and 33% increase respectively as compared to the previous week. Overall, the number of deaths reported this week decreased by 8% as compared to the previous week, with over 64 000 deaths reported. However, the Western Pacific Region and the Eastern Mediterranean Region showed a sharp increase in new deaths as compared to the previous week, 48% and 31% respectively. The cumulative number of cases reported globally is now nearly 197 million and the number of cumulative deaths has reached 4.2 million.

In this edition, a special focus updates are provided on:

• SARS-CoV-2 Variants of Concern (VOCs) Alpha, Beta, Gamma and Delta which includes updates on the geographic distribution of VOCs.