Geneva, Apr 1 (IANS): In its weekly epidemiological update, the World Health Organization (WHO) said that new Covid-19 cases continued to rise for the fifth week in a row, with over 3.8 million new infections reported last week.

According to the update released on Wednesday for the week ending March 28, new cases have been spotted in all regions of the world, with specific surges in Southeast Asia, the Western Pacific and Africa, even though Europe and the Americas still make up 80 per cent of the numbers, reports Xinhua news agency.

The new, more contagious Covid-19 variants can be partly blamed for the increase as more and more countries are reporting them, the WHO said.

Furthermore, new deaths also increased for the second consecutive week to over 64,000 last week, up by 5 per cent compared to the previous week.

Meanwhile, the WHO reported that 177 countries and regions have started vaccinating, some of them through the COVAX Facility, an international initiative co-led by the WHO and its partners to ensure equitable global access to vaccines.

The overall number of global Covid-19 cases has surpassed 128.7 million, while the deaths have surged to more than 2.81 million, according to the Johns Hopkins University.

In its latest update on Thursday morning, the University's Center for Systems Science and Engineering revealed that the current global caseload and death toll stood at 128,791,500 and 2,814,899, respectively.