A health worker inoculates a child with a dose of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine against COVID-19 during a vaccination campaign in Lima on Jan 25, 2022, amid the coronavirus pandemic. (ERNESTO BENAVIDES / AFP)
ROME / BERLIN / HAVANA / LIMA – Peru registered 17,841 COVID-19 cases between June 19 and 25, an increase of 70 percent compared to the previous weekly period, the country's social security agency Essalud reported on Sunday.
The agency said in its report that increases in cases have occurred throughout the country, with Lima and Arequipa registering 11,254 and 2,188 cases, respectively.
The South American country has recorded 3,634,918 cases and 213,545 deaths from COVID-19 since the start of the pandemic, according to the latest report from the Peruvian Ministry of Health.
Alegre Raul Fonseca, executive president of Essalud, said that people aged 30 and above have been the most affected by the disease.
More than 78 million COVID-19 vaccine doses have been applied in Peru, with 27.65 million people having received two doses, 18.75 million three doses, and 2.64 million four doses.
A resident shows his identification card to a police officer who is limiting access to a neighborhood as a way to curb the spread of COVID-19, as nurses stand behind, in Havana, Cuba, Feb 22, 2021. (RAMON ESPINOSA / AP)
Cuba
Cuba officially started the 2022 summer break season from Saturday as the continuing decline of COVID-19 cases has prompted the country to lift anti-pandemic measures for the first time in two years.
The holiday will run through the end of August, coinciding with the school summer vacation.
According to the Cuban government, guided tours, music concerts and festivals, and sports activities are scheduled for the weeks to come, as part of the summer break.
Since June 1, the number of daily cases in Cuba has dropped to about 30, sometimes even less than 20. On Friday, the country reported 22 new cases.
Olaf Scholz attends a signing ceremony of the coalition agreement to form a government, in Berlin, on Dec 7, 2021. (LIESA JOHANNSSEN-KOPPITZ / BLOOMBERG)
Germany
Germany will not shut schools and non-essential businesses again if the COVID-19 infection rate rises again later this year but protective masks would play a bigger role, Chancellor Olaf Scholz told broadcaster ARD on Sunday.
The infection rate in Germany has been on the rise for the past month, reaching close to 700 new cases per 100,000 residents this week, after falling below 200 in late May, but Scholz said that vaccinations should help limit what measures will be needed to curb the spread of the virus.
"There should not be school closures again, and I also don't think that we will need the kind of lockdowns we had several times in the last couple of years," he told ARD in an interview.
"But I believe that you can expect that masks will play a bigger role again in the autumn and winter than they do now," he added.
Scholz, who has so far not been infected with COVID-19, said he would recommend that anyone over 60 years of age should seek a fourth shot of COVID-19 vaccine, as he had.
A worker of the Cremona hospital cleaning staff, wearing a personal protective equipment, walks past the COVID-19 intensive care unit of the Cremona hospital, in Cremona, northern Italy on Jan 11, 2022.
(MIGUEL MEDINA / AFP)
Italy
The number of active cases of coronavirus surpassed 1 million in Italy on Sunday, the result of a swift increase in cases over the last two weeks.
As recently as June 17, Italy had fewer than 575,000 active cases of COVID-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus. On Sunday, that number totaled 1.01 million, an increase of more than 75 percent in a span of 16 days
As recently as June 17, Italy had fewer than 575,000 active cases of COVID-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus. On Sunday, that number totaled 1.01 million, an increase of more than 75 percent in a span of 16 days.
The Ministry of Health has said the increases in the infection rate are mostly due to the Omicron-5 sub-variant of the virus.
Italy became the fourth country in the world to have more than 1 million active cases, following the United States, with 3.5 million, Germany, with 1.5 million, and France, with 1.4 million, according to data from the World Health Organization.
Eight of Italy's 21 regions and autonomous provinces are considered to be at high risk for the coronavirus, with the remainder considered at moderate risk.
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The coronavirus transmission rate has been rising at a similar rate: the government reported on Friday that the rate rose for the fourth consecutive week, reaching 1.30 over the most recent period up from 1.07 a week earlier. A rate above 1.0 means a disease is in a phase of expansion.
The other main coronavirus indicators have also been on the rise in recent weeks, though not to the same extent as the infection rate and the transmission rate.
Daily mortality figures remain below 100, totaling 57 on Sunday. The number of patients in intensive-care units, meanwhile, has inched higher, reaching 291 Sunday, an increase of 16 from the day before. But those figures are less than a tenth of all-time highs set two years ago.
The latest increases come despite Italy having a largely successful vaccine rollout. Government data shows that as of Sunday, 90.1 percent of residents over the age of 12 had been fully vaccinated. A total of 96.6 percent of those residents are either fully vaccinated or have recovered from COVID-19 in the last six months, a status seen as providing increased protection against the virus.