Cases of the novel coronavirus are dropping everywhere across the globe — even in regions where there have been recent outbreaks.
Driving the news: A World Health Organization report released Wednesday said that cases of the coronavirus have dropped across the world, including the Western Pacific region, where cases have been rising since winter, according to CBS News.
Yes, but: Deaths caused by the coronavirus have surged by 40% in the last week — which is “likely due to changes in how COVID-19 deaths were reported across the Americas and by newly adjusted figures from India,” according to CBS News.
The bigger picture: The WHO said that not all COVID-19 cases are reported, though, and the virus is still spreading under the radar.
- China has been experiencing its biggest COVID-19 wave since the beginning of the pandemic. Shanghai recently went under lockdown due to the COVID-19 surge.
- Europe has seen a recent spike in COVID-19 cases.
- And, in the United States, the BA.2 coronavirus variant — a subvariant strain of the omicron variant — has become the most dominant strain of the virus.
What they said: “Data are becoming progressively less representative, less timely and less robust,” WHO said, per ABC News. “This inhibits our collective ability to track where the virus is, how it is spreading and how it is evolving: information and analyses that remain critical to effectively end the acute phase of the pandemic.”