LONDON (Reuters) – Daily coronavirus infections have been falling worldwide for a month and reached their lowest level since mid-October on Tuesday, Reuters figures show, but health experts have warned of apathy even as vaccines are being launched worldwide.
Falls of infections and deaths coincide with severe blockages and restrictions on assemblies and movements, as governments weigh the need to stop the successive waves of the pandemic with the need to bring people back to work and children to school.
But optimism about a way out of the crisis has been tempered by new variants of the virus, raising fears about the effectiveness of vaccines.
“Now is not the time to let your guard down,” said Maria Van Kerkhove, technical director of the World Health Organization for COVID-19, at a briefing in Geneva.
“… We cannot allow ourselves to get into a situation where we have cases that are growing again.”
COVID-19 has hit some countries much harder than others, although differences in the way infections are counted locally make a perfect comparison between apples and apples impossible.
351,335 new infections were reported worldwide on Tuesday, averaging seven days, down from 863,737 on January 7. There were 17,649 deaths on January 26, down from 10,957 on February 16.
COVID-19 infections are declining in the United States, with an average of 77,883 new infections reported each day. This is 31% of the peak – the highest daily average reported on January 8.
There have been 27,902,387 infections and 490,795 coronavirus-related deaths reported in the United States since the pandemic began, the highest figure in the world.
To date, 85 countries have started vaccinating people for coronavirus and have administered at least 187,892,000 doses, according to Reuters figures.
Gibraltar, a British overseas territory in the southern tip of Spain, rules the world and has given enough doses of vaccine to 40% of its population, assuming each person needs two doses.
((Interactive graphical tracking of global coronavirus spread: open tmsnrt.rs/2FThSv7 in an external browser))
Reporting by Nick Macfie and Josephine Mason