More than 200 million cases of Covid-19 have been recorded worldwide since the discovery of the virus in December 2019 in China. But these cases would be vastly underestimated.
More than 200 million cases of Covid-19 have been identified worldwide since the discovery of the virus in December 2019 when contaminations start to rise sharply, while deaths increase more slowly, according to an AFP count from official reports stopped this Thursday at 7 am GMT.
On average, more than 600,000 daily cases have been detected worldwide over the past seven days, an increase of 68% from the low reached in mid-June (360,000 new cases per day) mainly attributable to the spread of the Delta variant identified for the first time in India, with increased contagiousness.
At the same time, worldwide deaths (currently 9,350 per day) have increased by 20% since early July, when the numbers had dropped to 7,800 daily deaths.
This gap between the increase in cases and deaths is observed in some of the countries currently most affected: in the United States, the country which deplores the most new cases per day, these have exploded by more than 820% since the end of June (currently 94,000 per day compared to 11,000 at the time), while the number of new deaths has increased by about 105%, from 210 in early July to 430 currently.
Underestimated cases?
In the United Kingdom, where up to 47,000 cases were detected every day a few weeks ago, at the height of the last wave (30 times more than in May), deaths have meanwhile been multiplied by more than 10, from 6 per day to more than 80. A very low level compared to the records reached in the country which deplored in January up to 1,250 daily deaths.
Conversely, Indonesia, which currently has 35,000 cases per day, down 19% over one week, continues to record an increasing number of deaths: 1,700 per day for the last 7 days, 8% more than the previous week. The current wave is the worst suffered since the start of the pandemic by this country which currently deplores the most new deaths in the world.
These differences are accompanied by strong inequalities in terms of access to vaccination. 58% of Americans and 69% of Britons have received at least one dose of the vaccine, compared to 18% of Indonesians. US health officials estimate that vaccinated people are 25 times less likely to be hospitalized or die from Covid-19.
The 200,065,905 cases of Covid-19 recorded worldwide are very probably underestimated, since a significant proportion of the less serious or asymptomatic cases remain undetected despite the intensification of screening in many countries, testing policies being different from one country to another. The pandemic has officially killed more than 4.25 million people worldwide, again a figure that the WHO considers to be underestimated.
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