Europe Seeing Below 1Mln New COVID Cases For 2nd Consecutive Week - WHO Regional Director

Muhammad Irfan Published February 25, 2021 | 03:30 PM

MOSCOW (UrduPoint News / Sputnik - 25th February, 2021) Europe is registering less than 1 million new COVID-19 cases for a second week in a row, but the transmission rate is still high, WHO Regional Director for Europe Hans Henri Kluge said Thursday.

"For the second consecutive week, less than 1 million new cases were reported as transmission continues to slow across the region. The decrease in new cases in the past month is driven by countries that have implemented new measures to slow transmission," Kluge said at a regional WHO press conference.

Kluge remarked, however, that the rate of transmission remained high and two strains were of particular note as they continued to "displace other variants."

"New reported cases have declined by almost a half since the end of 2020. However, to put that into perspective, the number of new cases in the region now is 10 times higher than in May last year," Kluge said.

According to the weekly report by WHO, Europe registered 939,271 new cases in seven days as of February 23.