(Paris) More than 250 million cases of COVID-19 have been officially identified worldwide since the start of the pandemic, according to an AFP count from official reports on Monday at 4 p.m. EST.
The figures are based on reports communicated daily by the health authorities in each country. A significant proportion of the less serious or asymptomatic cases remain undetected despite the intensification of screening in many countries since the start of the pandemic. In addition, testing policies differ from country to country.
The most affected region in terms of number of cases, Europe has recorded more than 76 million infections with COVID-19 since the WHO office in China reported the onset of the disease at the end of December 2019. La region is followed by Asia (56,201,653 cases), the United States and Canada (48,290,522 cases) and Latin America and the Caribbean (46,107,131 cases).
The number of new cases worldwide has been slowly increasing over the past few weeks. Nearly 449,000 new daily contaminations have been recorded on average over the past seven days, against just over 400,000 in mid-October.
Of the new cases currently recorded worldwide, more than 60% are in Europe, which has recorded an average of 279,000 per day over the past seven days.