Crucially, we must not forget what we can all do to fight this virus, which is to wash our hands with soap and hot water for the length of time it takes to sing Happy Birthday twice.
UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson, 3.03.2020
Since 31 December 2019, when the WHO was informed about the first cases in Wuhan, China, almost 85 million people are confirmed to have contracted COVID-19 (Coronavirus) from the SARS-CoV-2 virus and more than 1.8 million have died (all figures last updated 5 January 2021).
Highest per capita cases are often found in states with smaller populations where testing may lead to more detected cases. The highest number of reported cases per 100,000 people is now found in Andorra (10,249), followed by Montenegro (7,654), Luxembourg (7,362), San Marino (6,874) and the Czech Republic (6,552). Of the countries with very high total case numbers, the United States of America have a count of 5,785 cases per 100,000 people (with a total of 19 million cases), followed by India (10 million total, 742 relative) and Brazil (7.7 million total, 3,531 relative).
All these statistics must be treated with caution: Data availability and quality play an important part in these highly variable statistics, with the number of unreported cases being believed to be quite considerable in some countries.
Read more on the chronology of the pandemic in our blog.
