(CNN) – Covid-19 infections have grown at an alarming rate for eight consecutive weeks, the World Health Organization (WHO) has warned as the virus spreads uninterruptedly through hot spots around the world.
More than 5.2 million new cases were reported last week, at most in a single week since the start of the pandemic, WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus told a news conference in Geneva on Monday.
Deaths have also risen for the fifth week in a row, he said, and the pandemic has already officially claimed more than 3 million lives.
Tedros also warned that the pace of the pandemic is accelerating, even though some countries are proposing their own improved vaccination programs.
“It took nine months to reach 1 million deaths, four months to reach 2 million and three months to reach 3 million deaths,” Tedros said. “A large number can numb us, but each of these deaths is a tragedy for families, communities and nations.”
And as more elderly or at-risk adults are fully vaccinated and some savings open up, the WHO director-general has suggested that most of the virus could spread to younger adults. Tedros told reporters that infections and hospitalizations among young people between the ages of 25 and 59 are “growing at an alarming rate”, possibly due to highly communicable variants and the growing social mix among young people.
Doctors have already reported concerns about several young adults contracting COVID-19 in some hot spots, including Brazil, where a new variant has led to a devastating increase in hospitalizations and deaths.
Although vaccines are on the rise, covid-19 variants are a cause for concern
The WHO’s stern warning serves as a reminder of the pandemic, which has not yet dissipated, despite disparate vaccine launches around the world.
India is suffering from a terrible second wave of the virus and a significant portion of the world’s infections occur there. The country has reported more than 200,000 new cases in each of the past six days, nearly 1.5 million in the past week, and crowded hospitals are removing patients as they fight the spread.
Among the many active cases in India is former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, who is in stable condition in hospital after contracting COVID-19.
With more than 15 million infections, the country is now second only to the United States in global cases. The United States has reported nearly 32 million infections.
England added India to its list of travel bans on Monday, and Prime Minister Boris Johnson canceled a scheduled trip there, but the political campaign continues despite the dire situation.
Narendra Modi’s ruling party has said it will hold “small public meetings” with a limit of 500 people in the state of West Bengal, one of five states in which state elections are taking place, according to the party’s statement on Monday.
Much of Asia is similarly dealing with increasing cases. A sharp rise in Thailand has reduced hopes of receiving more tourists there, and places of hospitality have been identified as the cause of recent outbreaks.
In the United States, where millions of people are vaccinated every day, cases and hospitalizations have increased in the last month. Experts cite variants of the coronavirus, including the more contagious strain B.1,1.7 that recently fueled another wave in Michigan and a growing sense of pandemic fatigue as contributing factors.
Meanwhile, in Europe, there are some signs of a plateau in the continent’s third wave of infections, and the clean-up of the vaccine in the European Union has begun to accelerate.
But doubts about vaccines and the lingering effects of fears before the vaccine are still evident. A mass vaccination center in the southern French city of Nice has been forced to close early over the weekend after only 58 people showed up to receive 4,000 doses of AstraZeneca vaccine, which can be linked to a very small number of rare cases of blood clots, a spokesman for the regional police told CNN.
European regulators are also facing another decision on the Johnson & Johnson vaccine, which the US authorities stopped after some cases of coagulation were reported. A decision by the European Medicines Agency on vaccines is expected on Tuesday.
– Naomi Thomas, Christina Maxouris and Saskya Vandoorne contributed to the reporting.