The US saw the highest number of new coronavirus infections worldwide last week, amid the surging spread of Delta variant cases. The latest epidemiological report from the World Health Organization (WHO) revealed that the US had 500,322 new cases in the week ending July 25.

That represents a 131% increase in new cases versus the week before.

Globally, infections rose 8% to more than 3.8million cases. An average of about 540,000 daily cases were recorded in the past week, up from an average of 490,000 daily cases the prior week.

‘This increasing trend is largely attributed to substantial increases in the Region of the Americas and the Western Pacific Region,’ WHO stated in its report published on Wednesday.

The highest number of cases after the US were reported in Brazil, Indonesia, the UK and India, respectively.

Coronavirus deaths jumped 21% around the world last week to 69,000, with the majority of the fatalities in the Americas and Southeast Asia.

The number of cases around the world has reached nearly 194million while the number of deaths has exceeded 4million.

‘If these trends continue, it is expected that the cumulative number of cases reported globally could exceed 200million in the next two weeks,’ WHO stated.

The spread of the highly contagious Delta variant is largely responsible for the uptick in cases.

On Thursday, President Joe Biden laid out his administration’s plans to combat the Delta variant, including calling on state and local governments to give $100 to newly vaccinated Americans.

‘After months and months of cases going down, we’re seeing a spike in Covid cases and they’re going up. Why? Because of this new variant, called the Delta variant,’ Biden said. ‘This is a much different variant from the ones we dealt with previously.’

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