AMMAN: Jordan has recorded a second consecutive day without a COVID-19 fatality for the first time in the 18 months since it began publishing figures for the deadly disease, according to a government source.
The kingdom last month stopped issuing daily tallies of coronavirus-related deaths and infections amid a steep drop in case numbers. The government instead now provides a weekly roundup.
Last week saw 17 deaths and 1,731 infections, according to official figures. The fatalities took Jordan’s death toll since the start of the pandemic to 14,048.
The source said on Thursday that just 85 people were receiving treatment for COVID-19 and that the number of daily infections ranged between 140-150. Daily cases in Jordan peaked at 17,322 on Feb. 16.
The World Health Organization said in its latest report on Wednesday that the number of coronavirus cases reported globally last week fell 16 percent from the previous seven days to 9 million, while deaths dropped to 26,000.
The number of infections were down in all regions of the world, it added.
However, the health organization said there remained a lot of uncertainty about the number of infections as cases could be going undetected because many countries had stopped widespread testing.
The WHO said it was also tracking an omicron variant of the virus — a recombination of versions BA.1 and BA.2 — which was first detected in Britain in January, which could be about 10 percent more transmissible than previous mutations.