Big decline in new coronavirus infections globally

The number of new Covid infections recorded globally fell by nearly a fifth last week, despite a report suggesting that the shelf life of the AstraZeneca jab has hampered efforts to vaccinate the developing world.

Commuters walk over London Bridge towards the City of London in January this year. Picture:

The number of new Covid infections recorded globally fell by nearly a fifth last week, despite a report suggesting that the shelf life of the AstraZeneca jab has hampered efforts to vaccinate the developing world.

Just over 16 million new infections were recorded during the week to Sunday, down 19 per cent on the previous seven days, the World Health Organisation said. Data suggests that the spread of Omicron is crowding out all other variants, which have declined sharply.

Among more than 400,000 Covid-19 virus sequences uploaded to the world’s biggest virus database in the past week, more than 98 per cent were Omicron, WHO said. About 75,000 deaths were reported, a similar level to a week earlier.

Meanwhile, officials said that the relatively short shelf life of AstraZeneca’s vaccine was complicating a rollout to the world’s poorest nations.

The AstraZeneca jab is one of the main weapons of the Covax scheme that was created to provide vaccines to the world’s poorest countries.

Some nations have received doses just weeks from their use-by date. African countries have said that they need about 10 weeks of shelf life to administer the vaccines. AstraZeneca told the Reuters news agency that more than 250 million doses of its vaccine had left factories with less than 10 weeks before expiry.

The Times