The overall number of Covid cases has surged past 257 million with increases in cases in the Americas, Europe and Asia.
According to Johns Hopkins University (JHU), the total case count mounted to 257, 158,204 while the death toll from the virus reached 5,146,154 Sunday morning.
The World Health Organization says coronavirus deaths in Europe rose 5% in the last week, making it the only region in the world where COVID-19 deaths increased.
The UN health agency said confirmed cases jumped 6% globally, driven by increases in the Americas, Europe and Asia, reports AP. In its weekly report on the pandemic issued late Tuesday, WHO said COVID-19 deaths in all regions other than Europe remained stable or declined, and totaled 50,000 worldwide last week. Of the 3.3 million new infections reported, 2.1 million came from Europe.
It was the seventh consecutive week that COVID-19 cases continued to mount across the 61 countries and territories that WHO counts in its European region, which stretches through Russia to Central Asia.
While about 60% of people in Western Europe are fully immunized against COVID-19, only about half as many are vaccinated in the eastern part of the continent, where officials are struggling to overcome widespread vaccine hesitancy.
In the last week, Austria has put tight restrictions on the movement of unvaccinated people, the Netherlands and some other European countries have reintroduced lockdown measures to try to slow infections, and the U.K. decided to roll out booster doses to everyone over 40.
The US has recorded 47,701,872 cases to date and more than 771,013 people have died so far from the virus in the country, as per the university data.
Brazil, which has been experiencing a new wave of cases since January, registered 22,012,150 cases as of Saturday, while its Covid death toll rose to 612, 587.
India's COVID-19 tally rose to 34,499,925 on Saturday, as 10,302 new cases were registered during the past 24 hours across the country, showed the federal health ministry's latest data.
Besides, 267 new deaths due to the pandemic since Friday morning took the total death toll to 465,349.