Covid-19 around the world: how are some key countries faring?

With some notable exceptions – including the UK – where confirmed infections have begun climbing again, the number of confirmed new coronavirus cases appears, once more, to be fading in many countries around the world.

But that situation may not last. What happens next will depend mainly on two factors: whether (or when) the far more transmissible, and possibly more dangerous, Delta variant takes hold as it has in Britain; and how fast populations get vaccinated.

As Hans Kluge, the World Health Organization’s Europe director, put it: “We have been here before.” Infections ebbed last summer, too, only for a new strain to send them soaring again. Vaccinating urgently, and maintaining public health measures, will be key, he said.

As Boris Johnson prepares, with daily deaths, infections and vaccine doses stated as rolling seven-day averages.