"Digital Reading" Week of Global Epidemic: Delta Strains Occupy "Absolute Advantage"

People wear masks on a trip in London, England, on October 23, 2021. (Photo by Xinhua news agency reporter Li Ying)

GENEVA, Nov. 2 (Xinhua) -- The World Health Organization's weekly report on the new crown epidemic on november 2 pointed out that among the new coronavirus strains currently circulating in most countries, delta strains occupy an "absolute advantage".

According to the weekly report, of the 842,510 sample sequences submitted to the Influenza Data Sharing Global Initiative platform, an international shared genetic sequence resource, 99.5% were of the Delta strain, 0.2% of the gamma strain, 0.1% of the alpha strain, and 0.2% of other variants such as the Miao strain and the Ramda strain.

In the week to 31 October, globally, there were more than 3 million new confirmed COVID-19 cases and more than 50,000 new deaths, both of which increased slightly by 3% and 8% respectively from the previous week, according to WHO data.

In the six global regions classified by WHO, the number of new confirmed cases in all regions declined or remained stable this week, except for the 6% increase in new confirmed cases in Europe. Among them, the Eastern Mediterranean region saw the largest decline of 12%, followed by Southeast Asia and Africa, both with a decline of 9%.

Southeast Asia was the region with the largest increase in the number of new COVID-19 deaths globally this week, up 50% compared to the previous week, followed by Europe and the Western Pacific with 12% and 10% increases, respectively.

This week, the top 5 countries in the world in terms of the number of new confirmed COVID-19 cases were the United States, the United Kingdom, Russia, Turkey and Ukraine.

According to the who website, as of 17:40 CET on the 2nd (00:40 Beijing time on the 3rd), the number of confirmed covid-19 cases worldwide increased by 347703 from the previous day to 246951274; the number of deaths increased by 5981 to 5004855.