Published on 12/18/2020 at 5:27 p.m.
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The pandemic continues to gain ground in the world this week but it is in Africa that we have recorded the strongest acceleration in the number of contaminations per day (+ 19%), ahead of Latin America and the Caribbean (+ 11% ), and the United States and Canada (+ 8%). An important indicator, however, the number of diagnosed cases only reflects a fraction of the actual number of infections and comparisons between countries should be taken with a grain of salt, as testing policies differ from one country to another. South Africa is the country where the epidemic is progressing the fastest (+ 56%, 8,007 new cases per day), among those having recorded more than 1,000 daily cases during the past week. Next are Denmark (+ 52%, 3,334 cases), Spain (+ 48%, 9,338 cases), Israel (+ 48%, 2,230 cases), the United Kingdom (+ 42%, 22,982 cases) and the Czech Republic (+ 42%, 5,582 cases).
However, the United States is by far the country which records the greatest number of contaminations this week, with 228,049 new daily cases (+ 9%), ahead of Brazil (+ 12%). And it is also the state that has the most deaths (2,605 per day on average), ahead of Brazil (723), Italy (656), Mexico (594) and Russia (553).
>> To read also – R effective Covid-19: the regions where the epidemic is starting again, our map of France
Conversely, some countries are benefiting from a more or less significant decline in the Covid-19 epidemic. The strongest were observed in Iran (-30%, 7,930 new daily cases), ahead of Georgia (-28%, 3,202 cases), Iraq (-26%, 1,314 cases), Bulgaria (-25%, 2,108 cases) and Jordan (-24%, 2,384 cases). Since the end of December, the pandemic has killed at least 1.66 million people worldwide, for nearly 75 million confirmed infections. The United States remains the most bereaved country (310,792), ahead of Brazil (184,827 dead) and India (144,789).
