YEREVAN, MAY 12, ARMENPRESS. Over 5.5 million novel coronavirus cases and over 90,000 deaths were registered worldwide in the past week, which is 4% less than during the previous seven-day period, the World Health Organization (WHO) said in a weekly bulletin released in Geneva early on Wednesday, reports TASS news agency.

“The number of new COVID-19 cases and deaths globally decreased slightly this week, with over 5.5 million cases and over 90 000 deaths”, the organization said in its COVID-19 Weekly Epidemiological Update. “Case and death incidence, however, remains at the highest level since the beginning of the pandemic”.

On May 3-9, the global organization was informed about 5,517,602 new cases all over the world, and 90,242 COVID-related deaths. As of May 9, a total of 157,362,408 cases of the infection and 3,277,834 COVID-related fatalities were reported worldwide.

The most noticeable growth in cases (up 6%) was registered in Southeast Asia, which, according to the WHO classification also includes India. Cases declined by 23% in Europe, by 13% in Eastern Mediterranean, by 5% in Africa, by 4% in North and South America.

Mortality spiked in Western Pacific (up 34%) and Southeast Asia (up 15%), but declined in Europe (down 18%), Eastern Mediterranean (down 13%), North and South America (down 4%) and Africa (down 3%).

In the past seven days, over 919,000 people contracted the infection in Europe, over 19,000 patients died. The number of cases in North and South America increased by over 1.2 million in the reported period, while fatalities grew by 33,000. In Southeast Asia, doctors registered over 2.8 million new cases of the novel coronavirus, over 28,000 patients died.

India accounts for the majority of cases registered on May 3 - May 9 (2.7 million new cases), followed by Brazil (over 423,000 new cases), the United States (over 334,000), Turkey (over 160,000), Argentina (over 140,000), Iran (over 124,000), France (over 122,000), Colombia (over 108,000), Germany (over 103,000), Italy (over 67,000) and Russia (over 57,000).