Weekly epidemiological update on COVID-19 - 6 July 2021

Last week, the number of new cases increased slightly, while the number of new deaths continued to decrease, with over 2.6 million new cases and just under 54 000 new deaths reported globally. This is the lowest weekly mortality figure since early October 2020. The cumulative number of cases reported globally now exceeds 183 million and the number of deaths is almost 4 million. Last week, all Regions reported an increase in new cases except for the Americas. The European Region reported a sharp increase in incidence (30%) whereas African region reported a sharp increase in mortality (23%) when compared to the previous week. All Regions, with the exception of the Americas and South-East Asia, reported an increase in the number of deaths last week.

In this edition, a special focus update on the variants is provided, which includes updates on emerging evidence surrounding the phenotypic characteristics of VOCs (transmissibility, disease severity, risk of reinfection, and impacts on diagnostics and vaccine performance), updates on the geographic distribution of VOCs and on the variant classification. It also includes the variant working definitions, as well as other variants and amino acid changes under monitoring.