Coronavirus pandemic reaches 4 million people infected

Across the world some 4,100,000+ people are now infected with Covid-19. The actual number is much higher but, for lack of testing and diagnosis in some countries, we may never know the exact number. Still the statistics, as varied and unreliable as they may be, still provide some general trends and provide scientists with valuable data.

There has never been a world viral pandemic that has been so numerically tracked and so widely reported.

The US has a total of 1,347,309 confirmed cases of Covid-19, adding around 30,000 new cases every day over the past month. And whilst the ‘curve’ started flattening at the start of April, the rise has been consistent, for the past month. There’s now been over 80,000 deaths attributed to Covid-19 with an average of 2,000 deaths per day, also being consistent during the past month.

Beyond the situation in the US, the countries worst hit by Covid-19 are in Europe – the UK (31,587 deaths), Italy (30,395 deaths), Spain (26,478 deaths) and France (26,310 deaths).

Statistically, the countries with the highest death rates have been San Marino, a microstate in northern Italy, with 1,208 deaths per 1 million population, Belgium (740 deaths per 1M), Spain (566 deaths per 1M), Italy (503 deaths per 1M) and the UK (465 deaths per 1M). The US death rate is 242 deaths per 1M.

In south east Asia both the rates of reported infections and death rates have been relatively low. Across the entire 10 countries of ASEAN, the average infection rate has been much lower than in, for example, some of the worst hit European countries (around 5,000 people infected per 1 million population). Singapore, with its high number of infections compared to its tiny population, is leading the infection rate (3,839 people per 1M), some 18 times higher than the next country, Malaysia (204 people per 1M), and 90 times higher than Thailand.

Singapore’s testing rate has also been the highest in the region with around 30,000 people tested per 1 million people, 4 times higher than Malaysia and 9 times higher than Thailand. The US testing rate is around 27,000 per 1 million people.

• Singapore – 22.460 total infections and 20 deaths

(Mostly from a sudden spike around the start of April in its migrant worker population. The death rate has also been extremely low)

• Indonesia – 13,645 and 959

(Regional health NGOs are sure that the infected numbers are much higher in the archipelago)

• Philippines – 10,610 and 704

(Also has the highest death rate amongst the SE Asian nations although still extremely low compared with the European death rates)

• Malaysia – 6,589 and 108

• Thailand – 3,004 and 56

(The daily infection rate is now in single digits for the past two weeks)

• Vietnam – 288 and 0

• Myanmar – 178 and 6

(Myanmar also has the lowest testing rate of any of the reporting ASEAN countries)

• Cambodia – 122 and 0

• Laos – 19 and 0

Brunei has reported no Covid-19 cases.

All the statistics are from the worldometers.info website.