Agencies

New Delhi, May 22:

Globally, the total coronavirus cases figure is nearing 527 million, including over 496 million recoveries with around 6.3 million deaths and over 23.9 million active cases. 

The World Health Organization (WHO) said in its latest weekly update said that the number of virus-related deaths dropped by 21 per cent last week worldwide but cases are surging. The world health body also said that cases increased in the Americas, Middle East, Africa and the Western Pacific, while there was a drop in Europe and Southeast Asia. 

However, the figures reported to the United Nations health body did not include data from North Korea, which is reporting a large number of cases of a mysterious fever, most of which are believed to be linked to coronavirus. The WHO has urged North Korea to share data and information regarding the pandemic.

Here are the latest updates:

> North Korea added 186,090 fresh cases of the mysterious fever amid the country’s first reported Covid outbreak in two years, the Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) said on Sunday and did not provide details regarding how many of these fresh cases were linked to Covid-19. The overall caseload of the “mysterious fever” is over 2.4 million.

More than a million health workers in North Korea have been mobilised to find people with the mysterious fever and isolate them at quarantine facilities. On Saturday, the United States and South Korea expressed concerns over the Covid-19 crisis in North Korea and offered to send vaccines to Pyongyang but got no response.

In the United Kingdom, the Covid-19 alert level has been reduced from four to three as infections continue to fall. Earlier, health authorities had said that the current BA.2 driven Omicron wave is “subsiding” but it is expected the number of cases will increase due to BA.4 and BA.5 sub-types.

China’s Beijing added 63 fresh domestically transmitted Covid-19 cases in the last 24 hours. Of these, 56 were found in controlled areas and seven during community screening tests, Liu Xiaofeng, deputy director at Beijing Center for Disease Prevention and Control said during a press conference on Saturday.

Over 13,000 residents of the locked-down Nanxinyuan residential compound in southeast Beijing were relocated to quarantine hotels on Friday night due to 26 new Covid cases discovered in recent days, a report by news AFP said on Saturday. “Experts have determined that all Nanxinyuan residents undergo centralised quarantine beginning midnight May 21 for seven days,” the Chaoyang district authorities said.

India on Saturday reported 2,323 new Covid-19 cases which pushed the overall cases to 43,134,145, according to the health ministry’s dashboard. Twenty-five people succumbed to the virus and the toll has climbed to 524,348.