The number of new coronavirus cases reported worldwide has continued to fall except in the Americas and Africa, the World Health Organization said in its latest assessment of the pandemic.
In its weekly pandemic report released late Wednesday, the U.N. health agency said about 3.5 million new cases and more than 25,000 deaths were reported globally, which respectively represent decreases of 12% and 25%.
The downward trend in reported infections began in March, although many countries have dismantled their widespread testing and surveillance programs, making an accurate count of cases extremely difficult.
WHO said there were only two regions where reported COVID-19 infections increased: the Americas, by 14%, and Africa, by 12%. Cases remained stable in the Western Pacific and fell everywhere else, the agency said.
WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus warned during a press briefing this week that “the rising cases in more than 50 countries highlights the volatility of this virus.”
Tedros said COVID-19 variants, including mutated versions of the highly infectious omicron, are driving a resurgence of COVID-19 in several countries, including South Africa, which was the first to identify omicron in November.
He said relatively high rates of population immunity are preventing a spike in hospitalizations and deaths but cautioned that “this is not guaranteed for places where vaccination levels are low.” Only about 16% of people in poorer countries have been immunized against COVID-19.
WHO’s report noted that some of the biggest jumps in COVID-19 cases were seen in China, which saw a 145% rise in the last week.
Earlier this week, Chinese authorities doubled down on pandemic restrictions in Shanghai after a brief period of loosening up. The move frustrated residents who were hoping a more than monthlong lockdown was finally easing after complaints of food shortages and quarantines where some people were forced to surrender their house keys.
WHO’s Tedros said Tuesday he didn’t think China’s “zero-COVID” strategy was sustainable, “considering the behaviour of the virus now and what we anticipate in the future.”
On Thursday, North Korea announced its first coronavirus outbreak and imposed a nationwide lockdown. The size of the outbreak wasn’t immediately known, but it could have serious consequences because the country has a poor health care system and its 26 million people are believed to be mostly unvaccinated.
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This version has been updated to show the report was released late Wednesday, not Tuesday.
China’s leaders are struggling to reverse an economic slump without giving up anti-virus tactics that shut down Shanghai and other cities, adding to challenges for President Xi Jinping as he tries to extend his time in power.
The ruling Communist Party has declared its “zero-COVID” goal of preventing all infections takes priority over the economy. It is a decision with global implications and comes despite warnings by experts including the head of the World Health Organization that the goal might be unattainable.
“We don’t think it is sustainable,” the WHO director-general, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, said Tuesday.
China kept infection numbers low until early this year with a strategy that shut down cities, but entailed soaring costs. Beijing has switched to “dynamic clearing” that seals buildings or neighborhoods if infections are found. But with thousands of new cases of the highly infectious omicron variant reported every day, that keeps most of Shanghai’s 25 million people at home. Big parts of Beijing and other cities with tens of millions of people also are closed.
That is disrupting manufacturing and hampering the global flow of goods from smartphones to iron ore, increasing inflation risks in the United States and Europe. Consumer spending is weak, chilling Chinese demand for imports.
The ruling party is promising tax refunds and other aid to struggling entrepreneurs that Beijing counts on to create jobs and wealth. Premier Li Keqiang, the No. 2 leader, warned last week the employment situation is “complex and grim.”
On Wednesday, Li called during a Cabinet meeting for officials to focus spending and credit policies on preventing job losses, state TV and the official Xinhua News Agency reported. They gave no details of possible new initiatives.
Despite promises of aid, forecasters say economic growth in the current quarter will fall as low as 1.8% over a year ago from an anemic 4.8% in the last quarter. Growth for the full year is forecast as low as 3.8%, below the ruling party’s official 5.5% target and less than half of 2021′s 8.1% expansion.
“The Chinese government is willing to make some sacrifices on the economy in the short term to trade for long-term growth,” said Nomura economist Ting Lu. However, he said, “achieving ‘zero COVID’ is quite challenging, because omicron is more infectious.”
A foreign ministry spokesman on Wednesday defended China’s approach as realistic.
China’s strategy is “not to pursue zero infection but to control the epidemic situation in the shortest time at the lowest social cost,” said Zhao Lijian. “The vast majority of people in most areas in China live and work normally.”
Complaints about food shortages and other hardships and videos posted online showing people in Shanghai and other areas arguing with police have been deleted by censors.
Public frustration and economic losses add to complications for Xi ahead of a ruling party congress in October or November at which he is expected to try to break with tradition and award himself a third five-year term as leader.
Xi, the most dominant Chinese leader since at least the 1980s, still is expected to secure another term. But experts say rivals might gain leverage to trim his powers. Supporters of market-style economic reforms also want to roll back policies that favor state industry and tighter control of the private sector, China’s economic engine.
Wrangling over the cost of anti-virus strategies gives “an opening to his factional opponents” with “deeper ties to business sectors,” said Diana Choyleva of Enodo Economics in a report. “They are more attuned than Xi and his supporters to the impact of zero-Covid on the economy and on middle-class citizens.”
In a sign private industry is weakening, 4.4 million companies closed last year while only 1.3 million new enterprises opened, down from 13.8 million in 2019, according to Choyleva.
COVID restrictions have closed factories or suspended access to manufacturing centers for autos, electronics and other industries including Changchun and Jilin in the northeast and Guangzhou and Shenzhen in the south.
In the central city of Zhenzhou, the Xiao Nan Guo restaurant closed May 4 but still is paying its workforce of 100, according to an employee, Wang Huiqin. She said business was down about 40% before restaurants in the city of 13 million people were told to stop providing dine-in service.
“If the situation lasts for a few weeks, the company can handle it,” said Wang. “If it lasts longer, there will be problems because the costs will be too much.”
In Shanghai, most businesses have been closed since late March at an estimated cost of tens of billions of dollars a month in lost activity.
Cargo volume at the Port of Shanghai, the world’s busiest, is down 30%. Economists say foreign customers are looking for non-Chinese suppliers that might be more likely to deliver but charge more.
“This will add further to stagflation risk this year” in Western economies, said Tommy Wu of Oxford Economics, referring to a scenario of rising prices and falling economic activity.
Export growth in April sank to 3.7% over a year earlier from March’s 15.7%. Imports crept up 0.7%, in line with the previous month’s growth below 1%.
China was the only major economy to grow in 2020 after Beijing shut factories, shops and offices nationwide to fight the virus. The ruling party declared victory after a few months and reopened the economy.
Last year, Xi’s government shifted back to long-range plans that include trying to reduce excessive real estate debt. That triggered a plunge in construction and housing sales in mid-2021.
In a sign of the intensity of economic pain, Beijing faces appeals from foreign companies that usually avoid questioning official policy for fear of retaliation.
The American Chamber of Commerce in China says its members want a “more optimal balance” between disease prevention and business.
More than half of 121 companies that responded to an April 29-May 5 survey have delayed or reduced investment, according to the chamber.
“Members don’t see any light at the end of the tunnel,” said the chamber chairman, Colm Rafferty, in a statement.
At a May 5 meeting, party leaders appeared to reject such appeals and the “living with the virus” stance adopted by other governments.
Relaxing virus-control measures will lead to “large-scale infections, serious illness and deaths” and “seriously affect” the economy, they said in a statement. To shut down debate, it said “all sectors of society” should “unify their thoughts and actions” with party leaders.
Instead of giving up their growth target to pursue “zero-COVID,” party leaders “want both,” said Larry Hu and Xinyu Ji of Macquarie Group in a report.
“Zero-COVID at the cost of surging unemployment is a hard sell for China’s top leaders, especially in such a year of significant political importance,” they wrote.
This week, the industry ministry told local governments to help entrepreneurs pay rent, utilities and other expenses. It warned the “production situation isn’t optimistic.”
“We urgently need to take further effective measures,” a ministry statement said.
North Korea announced its first coronavirus infection more than two years into the pandemic Thursday as leader Kim Jong Un called for raising COVID-19 preventive measures to maximum levels.
The North’s official Korean Central News Agency said tests from an unspecified number of people with fevers in the capital Pyongyang confirmed they were infected with the omicron variant. North Korea had previously claimed a perfect record in keeping out COVID-19, a claim widely doubted by outside experts.
The country’s population of 26 million is believed to be mostly unvaccinated, after its government shunned vaccines offered by the U.N.-backed COVAX distribution program, possibly because those have international monitoring requirements.
KCNA said Kim called a meeting of the ruling Korean Workers’ Party’s Politburo where members decided to raise its anti-virus measures. Kim during the meeting called for officials to stabilize transmissions and eliminate the infection source as fast as possible.
Despite the decision to elevate anti-virus steps, Kim ordered officials to push ahead with scheduled construction, agricultural development and other state projects while bolstering the country’s defense postures to avoid any security vacuum.
Kim said officials must also formulate steps to ease any public inconveniences and other negative situations that could flare as a result of the boosted anti-pandemic measures. Kim said that “the single-minded public unity is the most powerful guarantee that can win in this anti-pandemic fight,” KCNA said.
North Korea’s announcement of the infections came after NK News, a North Korea-focused news site, cited unidentified sources who said authorities had imposed a lockdown on Pyongyang residents. South Korea’s government said it couldn’t confirm the report.
North Korea was one of the last places in the world without an acknowledged virus case. Turkmenistan, a similarly secretive and authoritarian nation in Central Asia, has reported no cases to the World Health Organization, though its claim also is widely doubted by outside experts. In recent months, some Pacific island nations that kept the virus out by their geographic isolation have recorded outbreaks.
Experts say a major COVID-19 outbreak would have devastating consequences because of North Korea’s poor health care system and could possibly trigger instability when combined with other problems like serious food shortages.
North Korea’s previous coronavirus-free claim had been disputed by many foreign experts. But South Korean officials have said North Korea had likely avoided a huge outbreak, in part because it instituted strict virus controls almost from the start of the pandemic.
Early in 2020 — before the coronavirus spread around the world — North Korea took severe steps to keep out the virus and described them as a matter of “national existence. It quarantined people with symptoms resembling COVID-19 and all but halted cross-border traffic and trade for two years and is even believed to have ordered troops to shoot on sight any trespassers who crossed its borders.
The extreme border closures further shocked an economy already damaged by decades of mismanagement and crippling U.S.-led sanctions over its nuclear weapons and missile program, pushing Kim to perhaps the toughest moment of his rule since he took power in 2011.
North Korea in January tentatively reopened railroad freight traffic between its border town of Sinuiju and China’s Dandong, but China announced a halt to the trade last month as it deals with a spread of COVID-19 in Dandong.
It’s unusual for North Korea to admit the outbreak of any infectious disease though Kim has occasionally been candid about national and social problems and policy failures.
During a flu pandemic in 2009 when the country was ruled by his father, Kim Jong Il, North Korea said that nine people in Pyongyang and the northwestern border town of Sinuiju had contracted the flu. Some outside experts said at the time the admission was aimed at winning outside aid.
Experts say Kim Jong Un still hasn’t publicly asked for any aid including COVID-19 vaccines from the United States and South Korea amid the prolonged stalemate in nuclear diplomacy.
Total Doses Distributed = 733,497,155. Total Doses Administered = 580,038,981. Number of People Receiving 1 or More Doses = 258,284,015. Number of People Fully Vaccinated = 220,287,778.
U.S. COVID-19 cases are up, leading a smattering of school districts, particularly in the Northeast, to bring back mask mandates and recommendations for the first time since the omicron winter surge ended and as the country approaches 1 million deaths in the pandemic.
The return of masking in schools is not nearly as widespread as earlier in the pandemic, particularly as the public’s worries over the virus have ebbed. But districts in Maine, New Jersey and Pennsylvania have brought masks back, with a few in Massachusetts also recommending them even as the school year enters its final weeks.
Maine’s largest school district, in Portland, said this week masks would return, with Superintendent Xavier Botana saying that was the “safest course at this time” amid rising cases. Bangor, Maine, schools also brought back a universal mask requirement.
High schools in the suburbs of Pittsburgh and in Montclair, New Jersey, a commuter suburb of New York City, also announced a return to masking, albeit temporarily through this week. According to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, most of the counties in the country considered to have “high” levels of COVID-19 are in the Northeast.
In parts of Massachusetts that have seen high levels of COVID-19 transmission, authorities are also recommending masks in schools.
Reactions have ranged from supportive to angry. On the Facebook page of Woodland Hills High School in suburban Pittsburgh, one woman called the change “#insane.”
Diana Martinez and Owen Cornwall, who have a first-grader at Graham and Parks School in Cambridge, Massachusetts, have been following the recommendation to mask their daughter.
“We’re very happy about it. It gives us a little peace of mind,” said Martinez, 42, a professor at Tufts University. “I think the parents generally trend toward wearing them and that gives us some comfort. It’s the same case at our pre-school. There will be a couple of parents who don’t mask their child, but we will be masking our child.”
Cornwall said there seems to be a general consensus in the school community in favor of playing it safe.
“We’re sort of lucky in this neighborhood, that they share our concerns with health,” said Cornwall, 37, a visiting scholar at Tufts.
Reported daily cases in the U.S. are averaging 79,000, up 50% over the past two weeks, according to data compiled by Johns Hopkins University. That’s a fraction of where daily case counts stood earlier this year, when they topped 800,000.
However, current case counts are a vast undercount because of a major downturn in testing and the fact tests are being taken at home and not reported to health departments.
An influential modeling group at the University of Washington in Seattle estimates that only 13% of cases are being reported to health authorities in the U.S. — which would mean an undercount of more than a half million new infections every day.
Despite the uptick in cases and the return to masking in a small number of schools, the response across the country has been largely subdued, reflecting the public’s exhaustion after more than two years of restrictions.
Outside of schools, however, officials have shown little interest in returning to mask mandates.
Last month, Philadelphia abandoned its indoor mask mandate just days after becoming the first large American city to reimpose the requirement in response to an increase in COVID-19 cases and hospitalizations.
The United States is approaching the grim marker of 1 million deaths from COVID-19. Globally, there have been more than 6 million deaths in the pandemic, according to a tally from Johns Hopkins University.
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Catalini reported from Trenton, New Jersey. Associated Press writer Patrick Whittle in Portland, Maine, and AP writers across the country contributed.
The European Union will no longer require masks to be worn at airports and on planes starting next week amid the easing of coronavirus restrictions across the bloc, authorities said Wednesday.
The European Union Aviation Safety Agency said it hoped the joint decision, made with the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control, would mark “a big step forward in the normalization of air travel” for passengers and crews.
The new guideline “takes account of the latest developments in the pandemic, in particular the levels of vaccination and naturally acquired immunity, and the accompanying lifting of restrictions in a growing number of European countries,” the two agencies said in a joint statement.
“Passengers should however behave responsibly and respect the choices of others around them,” EASA Executive Director Patrick Ky said. “And a passenger who is coughing and sneezing should strongly consider wearing a face mask, for the reassurance of those seated nearby.”
While the new recommendations take effect on May 16, rules for masks may still vary by airline beyond that date if they fly to or from destinations where the rules are different.
European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control director Andrea Ammon said washing hands and social distancing should still be practiced, but airport operators are advised not to impose distancing requirements if these are likely to lead to a bottleneck.
The agencies also recommended that airlines keep systems for collecting passenger locator information on standby in case they are needed in future, for example if a new dangerous variant emerges.
