Coronavirus: Europe has recorded more than 100 million Covid-19 cases since start of pandemic
- Of the European infections, more than 4.9 million cases have been reported over the past seven days alone
- People on the European continent are now, on the whole, more vaccinated than the worldwide average
Europe has recorded more than 100 million coronavirus cases, more than a third of all infections worldwide, since the start of the pandemic, an Agence France-Presse tally showed on Saturday.
The continent has once again become the pandemic’s epicentre in recent months, and is battling an upsurge of cases spurred on by the highly transmissible Omicron strain of the virus.
The European region, including 52 countries and territories from the Atlantic coast to Azerbaijan and Russia, has recorded 100,074,753 infections of Covid-19 over the past two years, the Agence France-Presse tally of official figures showed.
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That is equivalent to more than a third of the 288,279,803 cases declared worldwide since the outbreak of the pandemic in late 2019.
Of the European infections, more than 4.9 million have been reported over the past seven days alone, with 17 out of 52 countries or territories beating their previous record of most cases in a single week.
France alone has recorded more than one million new cases over the past week, which is equivalent to 10 per cent of all positive cases it has announced since the start of the pandemic.
The countries with the highest ratio of infections per 100,000 inhabitants in the world were all in Europe. Denmark scored worst with 2,045, followed by Cyprus with 1,969 and Ireland with 1,964.