HSP compiled the following COVID-19 Statistics for Countries (sorted by countries over 30 million population or 500+ cases). This data stands as of Tuesday, April 7, 2020.
Scroll down to download this excerpt from HSP’s database.
Fatality Insights, Country by Country. The total deaths so far are highest in the countries most in the news: Italy, Spain, the U.S., France and U.K.
When we look at number of new deaths in the past 4 days since I last posted, we see some changes in the top 5. The U.S. has become the new leader in new deaths, followed by France (which has been underreported), then Spain, the U.K. (a massive spike up) and then Italy.
In terms of 4-day % increase in fatalities, it is good to see Italy and Spain under 25%. the US/UK/France/Belgium had a 4-day increase from 59%-78%. The highest % increases go to countries with very low totals, but the change indicates they are starting their exponential ascent. These countries include: Bangladesh, Moldova, Mexico, Croatia, India, Colombia and Afghanistan. Most of these are extremely populated countries, so we are watching them warily to see how they control the spread.
Fatality rates per case: We are seeing some alarming rates suggesting that man countries are not able to keep up with testing, so only the most ill are getting tested and hospitalized. These countries include Sudan, Algeria, Italy (high in all metrics), Angola, Congo, the UK, Netherlands, Bangladesh, Mozambique, Spain and France. While half are in Africa, the fact that the other half are in advanced European countries with nationalized healthcare could cause some to rethink the idea that national healthcare is an ideal situation to tackle health problems. As this is a multivariable issue, no single variable can be used to make a conclusion, so let’s set that aside for now. It will be interesting and likely tragic to see how much rationing of care there was in these countries. But we have plenty of time to assess after the fact. Other countries with and without national healthcare show much lower fatality rates per case, including the U.S., Canada and Germany, all under 3%.
Fatality rates per million. The top country is now Spain. While we are not calling this the Spanish flu, the fact that the virus has impacted Spain more than any other country (again, not widely reported) is ironic at best. Many advance countries have the highest levels of death per million: Italy, Belgium, France, Netherlands, Switzerland, UK, Luxembourg and Sweden. The U.S. rate is increasing, but still lower than all of those European countries.
IF the US got to Spain’s fatality rate per million, we would hit nearly 100,000 deaths. While New York is approaching that metric, the country as a whole is appearing to avoid the severity of NY’s experience. While NY and NJ had terrible days today, their infection and hospitalization rates are declining rapidly and most of the other states are not seeing the increases that NY/NJ did. As a result, if we are careful about how we let the country open up and trickle out community immunity, we could escape the virus with a death toll no worse than the annual flu (55k). If we clamp down, we can get away with 25k deaths. If we don’t, it’ll be much higher. I am confident that the US models will continue to decline, so long as we stay shut down for 3 more weeks.
Then we really need to get some sort of immunity sticker or infuse people with plasma from immune people so that we can quickly spread mass immunity (or near immunity). I’m comforted that at least 250 teams are working on treatments and cures.
