Europe’s 26,726 new COVID-19-related deaths represented a ten percent weekly jump, while other regions showed decreasing trends. Of the European region’s 61 countries, 26 reported increases of ten percent or more in the number of new cases in the past week, with the highest numbers coming from Russia, the United Kingdom, and Turkey.

Europe reported almost two million new COVID-19 infections last week, the largest weekly case count in the region since the start of the pandemic, the World Health Organization (WHO) said here on Friday.

There were also almost 27,000 coronavirus-related deaths in Europe, more than half of all COVID-19 deaths in the world last week, WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said at a press briefing.