When the virus is out there, the population has no immunity and no therapy exists, then 60 to 70% of the population will be infected. The process has to be focused on not overburdening the health system by slowing the virus’s spread. It’s about winning time.
Since 31 December 2019, when the WHO was informed about the first cases in Wuhan, China, 332,930 people were confirmed to be infected by a new coronavirus (SARS-Cov-2), now known as Covid-19. 14,510 people have died (all figures last updated 23. March 2020).
Outside of China Italy has the highest number of cases (59,138) and deaths (5,476), followed by United States of America (31,573 cases, 402 deaths), Spain (28,572 cases, 1,720 deaths) and Germany (24,774 cases, 94 deaths). Italy has the highest total number of deaths, followed by China (3,276), Spain (1,720), Iran (1,685) and France (674).
Data availability and quality also play an important part in these highly variable statistics, with the number of unreported cases being believed to be quite considerable in some countries, which does also have an impact on the reported mortality rates.
Note: After it became apparent that the reported cases in China no longer outnumber the cases in the rest of the world by a significant number, this specific map of cases reported outside China was no longer updated. To see a more up to date picture, please refer to our main map of Covid-19/Coronavirus cases.
You can read more about the chronology of the pandemic in our blog.
