Last week's drop marked the first substantial decline for more than two months, with falling COVID-19 cases in every world region.

WHO's chief urged countries to donate vaccine doses to COVAX to enable 10 per cent of the populations of all countries to be inoculated by September and 30 per cent by year-end.

A pandemic is declared when an infectious or prevalent disease spreads globally. This differs from an epidemic, in which is the widespread outbreak is unique to a single country or community at a particular time.