COVID-19 related deaths are on the rise after seeing a decline last week, the World Health Organization (WHO) stated in a report released Wednesday. Over 45,000 global COVID-19 deaths were reported, a surge of around 40% from the previous week.

Although an increase in deaths and 10 million emerging infections were recorded, the United Nations health agency clarified that reported cases are on the decline worldwide. The increase in deaths is being attributed to an accounting change, the WHO said as reported by the Associated Press, as many nations are adjusting how they interpret COVID-related deaths.

Although COVID-19 cases are on the decline, the WHO warned that testing and other measures are being dropped in many areas, which the agency says, “inhibits [its] collective ability to track where the virus is, how it is spreading and how it is evolving: information and analyses that remain critical to effectively end the acute phase of the pandemic.”

“These increases are occurring despite reductions in testing in some countries,” WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said earlier this month. “The cases we're seeing are just the tip of the iceberg."

WHO Europe director Hans Kluge also stated this month that many countries have been relaxing COVID measures to “brutally from too much to too few.”

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