The Covid-19 pandemic has further accelerated in almost all regions of the world during the past week, with the exception of the Middle East and Asia: here are the striking weekly developments, taken from AFP databases .

An important indicator, the number of cases diagnosed only reflects a fraction of the actual number of infections and comparisons between countries should be taken with caution, as testing policies differ from one country to another.

With more than 749,000 contaminations recorded on average each day in the world, this indicator increases for the tenth consecutive week (+ 18% compared to the previous week), according to an AFP report stopped on Thursday.

The main outbreaks at the regional level took place in Oceania (+ 122% of cases) and in the United States / Canada region (+ 55%). The pandemic, on the other hand, slowed down in Asia (-13% of cases) and the Middle East (-12%).

Several African countries are among those recording the greatest accelerations of the pandemic during the past week.

Among those with at least 1,000 daily infections, Ethiopia is the one experiencing the strongest acceleration (+ 596% of cases recorded compared to the previous week, with 1,680 new daily cases on average).

Kenya (+ 483%, 2,298 cases), Zambia (+ 370%, 1,731), Mozambique (+ 155%, 1,511) and Botswana (+ 142%, 1,304) follow.

Zimbabwe is the country with the largest decrease in cases (-51%, with 2,148 cases per day), ahead of Belgium (-47%, 6,166), Austria (-36%, 2,292) and Hungary ( -36% also, 3,430), still among countries with at least 1,000 cases recorded per day.

The United States remains, by far, the country with the highest number of new infections in absolute terms this week (184,834 daily cases on average, + 51%), ahead of the United Kingdom (96,010, + 54%) and France (61,274, + 21%).

And the Europe region is the one that currently records the most cases, with more than 3 million in the last seven days (58% of the world total).

As a proportion of the population, excluding micro-states, the country with the most new cases this week is, like the previous week, Denmark (1,472 per 100,000 inhabitants), ahead of the United Kingdom (990).

Globally, 6,939 deaths have been recorded every day this week, a figure down 2%.

The Europe region is the one which currently records the most deaths, with 26,375 deaths last week (54% of the total), followed by the United States / Canada zone (10,604 deaths).

The United States is the country with the highest number of daily deaths this week (1,498), ahead of Russia (1,035).