Although new cases of COVID-19 in western Europe and parts of Asia are on the decline, the World Health Organization said on Wednesday that cases worldwide are still surging.
WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus told reporters that a spike in cases has sent the number of one-day cases globally above 100,000 for the first time since the outbreak. Tedros said that there were 106,000 new cases of the virus, as the worldwide total of cases approaches 5 million since the beginning of the outbreak.
Tedros said that two-thirds of those cases were from just four countries. The data shared by the World Health Organization showed a spike in US cases with 45,000 new cases reported to the organization on Tuesday, the most since the outbreak began.
It is unclear why the WHO’s figures differ from similar tracking data released by Johns Hopkins University, which shows only 21,000 new cases of the virus on Tuesday. The CDC’s figures largely matched those from Johns Hopkins University, which indicated there were 23,000 new coronavirus cases.
Even with the lower Johns Hopkins University numbers, the US continues to have the most daily coronavirus cases in the world. But other countries are seeing number jump.
Brazil and India are among the nations seeing the largest spike. Brazil had over 13,000 new cases of the virus on Wednesday. India had 6,000. Russia has leveled off, but still having a large number of new cases, with around 9,000 new cases reported on Wednesday, according to the WHO.
Western Europe and east Asia continue to see a drop in cases.
The UK had its lowest number of cases on Wednesday, 2,400, in nearly two months. Italy had 813 new cases on Wednesday after a peak of over 6,000 on one day. France reported 462 new cases on Wednesday after a peak of 7,500 cases in one day on April 1.
“We still have a long way to go in this pandemic,” Tedros said.
Tedros expressed concern that the virus is spreading in poorer regions of the world, as Africa and India begin to see a rising number of cases.
“We’re very concerned about the rising numbers of cases in low- and middle-income countries,” he said.
