While hopes are rising that a rapid rollout of Covid-19 vaccines is helping to tame the pandemic in the U.S., in much of the world the virus is still surging. Covid-19 case rates across the globe are at their highest levels since the start of the pandemic, illustrating the continuing race between vaccinations and the virus and the stiff challenge presented by new variants that are emerging and spreading quickly around the world.

As of Wednesday, nearly 5.6 million new confirmed cases were reported over the previous week, more than double the level of mid-February, and higher than the previous peak of late December, according to Our World in Data, a project based at Oxford University.

“There’s this feeling that, we have the vaccine, so it’s over,” said Devi Sridhar, professor of global public health at the University of Edinburgh in Scotland. “There’s still a long way for this pandemic to run.”