Worldwide cases of COVID-19 “increased sharply” in the past week but the overall number of deaths dropped, said the World Health Organization (WHO) in its weekly epidemiological update on Thursday. Between Dec. 27, 2021, and Jan. 2, 2022, the number of cases increased by 71 percent compared to the previous week, according to the U.N. health agency. The number of deaths dropped by 10 percent worldwide, WHO said. “This corresponds to just under 9.5 million new cases and over 41 000 new deaths reported during the last week. As of 2 January, a total of nearly 289 million cases and just over 5.4 million deaths have been reported globally,” WHO’s update said. While WHO didn’t make mention of Omicron, it’s likely the newly discovered variant sparked the latest rash of infections. This week, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reported that Omicron makes up about 95.4 percent …