ReliefWeb

HIGHLIGHTS

429,358 individuals reached through COVID-19 awareness and hygiene promotion sessions held at water points and through house-to-house campaigns.

IOM MHPSS teams reached 3,866 beneficiaries with key messages on MHPSS considerations during COVID-19.

IOM Core Pipeline provided four partners with WASH supplies and processed one PPE supplies request

SITUATION OVERVIEW

Public health systems globally continue to come under severe strain due to the unprecedented COVID-19 pandemic with total numbers of infected individuals reaching 83 million cases, and over 1.8 million deaths globally since the start of the pandemic (WHO Global Epidemiological Update, 5 January 2020).
According to WHO, over 4 million new cases were reported globally for the third week in a row, and new deaths increased by 3% to 76,000. Recent reports of different variants of COVID-19 have raised concern about, and interest in the impact of viral changes. As of 5 January 2021, the VOC-202012/01 variant initially detected in the United Kingdom has been detected in a small number of cases in 40 other countries/ territories/areas in five of the six WHO regions, and the 501Y.V2 variant initially detected in South Africa has been detected in six other countries/territories/areas.

In the past week, over 130,000 new cases were reported in the Africa region, a 13% increase compared to the previous week, and over 3,000 deaths, a 4% increase over the previous week. South Africa reported the highest number of new cases (93,978 new cases; 1,585 new cases per 1 million population), according to WHO.
South Sudan continues to see a rise in the number of confirmed cases, with 3,670 confirmed cases, 3,181 recoveries, and 63 deaths, as of 11 January 2021