Global coronavirus cases cross half a billion mark
More than two years after the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic, globally recorded coronavirus cases have surpassed the 500 million mark.
Driven by the Omicron variant of the coronavirus, infections spiked from 300 million in January to half a billion by April, although there has been a steady decline in cases in multiple countries since winter.
Over the past week, about 1.1 million cases a day have been recorded, which is 32 per cent fewer than two weeks ago, The New York Times reported, citing data from the Center for Systems Science and Engineering at Johns Hopkins University.
Deaths related to Covid-19 have also been declining, with about 3,800 a day on average over the past week.
The rise of BA.2 has been blamed for recent surges in China as well as infections in Europe.
According to the World Health Organisation (WHO), the BA.2 variant now makes up about 86 per cent of all sequenced cases globally.
Shanghai, China's financial hub, has been battling the worst wave of Covid-19 outbreak with nearly 25,000 new local cases every day.
However, South Korea has been leading in the daily average number of new cases. The country has been recording 182,000 new infections a day and accounts for one in every four infections globally.
New cases have been rising in 20 out of over 240 countries tracked, including Asian countries such as Taiwan, Thailand and Bhutan.
Nearly 6.5 million people have succumbed to the pandemic, with the United States reporting the highest number of deaths, followed by Russia, Brazil and India.
About 64 per cent of the world population has received at least one dose of a Covid-19 vaccine. But in low-income countries, only 14.8 per cent of people have received at least one dose.
Additional reporting by agencies
