It is going to spread further and I must level with you, I must level with the British public: many more families are going to lose loved ones before their time.
UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson, 12.03.2020
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).
The highest case mortality rates (reported deaths per number of confirmed cases) are found in Yemen with 29.1%, followed by Mexico (8.8%) and Montserrat (7.7%).
China now has a reported case mortality rate of 5%, while the United States reported a mortality of 1.7%. Of the countries with many reported cases, India, Brazil and France have relatively low reported case mortality rates (1.4%, 2.6% and 2.5% deaths of all reported cases).
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.
