Weekly epidemiological update on COVID-19 - 14 December 2021

Overview

Globally, the weekly incidence of both cases and deaths has declined during the past week (6-12 December 2021), with decreases of 5% and 10% respectively, as compared to the previous week. Nonetheless, this still corresponded to over 4 million new confirmed cases and just under 47 000 new deaths and the African Region reported a 111% increase in new cases last week. As of 12 December, nearly 269 million confirmed cases and nearly 5.3 million deaths have been reported globally.

In this edition, we provide updates on the geographic distribution of SARS-CoV-2 variants of concern (VOCs), and summarise phenotypic characteristics (transmissibility, disease severity, risk of reinfection, and impacts on diagnostics and vaccine performance) of VOCs based on available studies.