New Delhi, April 15 : The number of confirmed Covid-19 cases has surpassed 500 million globally, the World Health Organization (WHO) has said. The toll has exceeded 6.19 million people, the WHO noted, warning the pandemic that was declared on March 11, 2020, “is far from the end”. Despite over 11 billion vaccine doses administered worldwide, the organization added the Omicron variant BA.2 has been surging. The highly contagious BA.2 sub-variant is on the rise in many countries in Europe and Asia. China, South Korea, New Zealand are just a few who have witnessed record resurge over the last few months, besides record infections in Europe. BA.2 is being called the “stealth variant” as it has been hard to track than others. South Korea leads the world in the daily average number of new cases, reporting just less than 200,000 new infections a day and accounting for one in every four infections globally, as per analysis by experts. Chinese President Xi Jinping has asked his nation to stick to its strict “dynamic Covid clearance” policy while the global pandemic remains very serious. Its zero-Covid policy has put millions of people in lockdown once more. To fight Covid, Hong Kong shut schools and businesses, nearly sealed its borders for two years, banned more than two people from gathering and quarantined whole buildings, and yet witnessed 8,600 deaths in past 60 days of mostly elderly, unvaccinated people. GNK ING