Global COVID-19 cases over 517 mln, death toll passes 6.25 mln

The world had counted a total of 517,102,062 confirmed cases of COVID-19 and 6,250,668 deaths as of 13:20 Sunday (BJT), according to data from the Center for Systems Science and Engineering (CSSE) at Johns Hopkins University.

In particular, the United States, which reported most cases, had logged over 81.85 million confirmed cases of COVID-19 with deaths related to the disease exceeding 997,500 as of Saturday, according to the Johns Hopkins University.

Specifically, the country’s case count totaled 81,850,636 as the death toll hit 997,503 as of 19:20 Eastern Daylight Time (EDT) on Saturday.

More than 576.52 million doses of COVID-19 vaccines have been administered across the country by Saturday, showed the CSSE data.

A new, highly transmissible subvariant of Omicron, BA.2.12.1, is spreading rapidly across the United States, as COVID-19 cases in the country are ticking up again.

The New York State Department of Health first announced cases infected with the subvariant in mid-April. As of April 23, 41.6 percent of the confirmed cases in the state are caused by it, according to the latest data of the department.

The new strain made up 36.5 percent of new COVID-19 cases in the country in the week ending April 30, according to the data released Tuesday by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

The data increased from 26.6 percent a week before, and 16.7 percent two weeks earlier, CDC data showed.

BA.2.12.1 appears to be about 25 percent more transmissible over the BA.2 subvariant, said CDC Director Rochelle Walensky.

Italy recorded 40,522 new confirmed cases of COVID-19 and 113 new deaths, according to the latest statistics released by the Italian Ministry of Health on Saturday.

The total number of confirmed cases and deaths are now respectively 16,767,773 and 164,417.

In the meantime, South Africa counted 8,524 new confirmed cases, according to data from the National Institute For Communicable Diseases released on the same day.

The cases accounted for 31.08 percent of all those tested, the highest single-day positivity rate in testing this year, which is close to the record high of 34.9 percent registered on December 14, 2021.

What is worrying is that the current positivity rate in testing has stayed at high levels.

Experts were worried South Africa has entered its fifth wave of the COVID-19 epidemic.

Two new subvariants of the Omicron strain, BA.4 and BA.5, are likely to become the dominant mutant strains in the new wave due to their stronger transmissibility.

Japan on Saturday reported 39,327 new confirmed cases and 27 more deaths, according to statistics of the NHK (Japan Broadcasting Corporation).