GENEVA, Jan 6 – The World Health Organization (WHO) warned that COVID-19 infections had risen by 52 percent worldwide in four weeks and that this trend would continue into the winter.
The latest data from the health department, covering the period from November 20 to December 17, 2023, showed a significant increase of 850,000 new cases of this contagious disease compared to the previous 28 days.
The health department said that from November 13 to December 10, more than 118,000 hospitalizations for this reason and more than 1,600 new admissions to intensive care units were registered, with an overall increase of 23 and 51 percent, respectively.
Between November 20 and December 17, 2023, 105 nations documented cases of COVID-19 and 50 reported deaths from this cause.
Most of the infections were caused by a new strain of the coronavirus called JN.1, which the WHO is currently monitoring with particular attention and which was declared a “variant of concern” on December 18 due to its rapid increase in the prevalence of the virus in weeks.
According to available reports, the JN.1 variant was first discovered in the United States and then spread to dozens of countries after evolving from the Omicron variant, which was associated with a peak in Covid-19 infections in 2022 was connected.
As of December 17, 2023, more than 772 million confirmed cases and nearly seven million deaths had been documented worldwide since the first patient was detected in November 2019. (Text: PL)(Photo: Archive/Internet)