So the media likes to say we have the most cases, but we do, by far, the most testing. If we did very little testing, we wouldn’t have the most cases. So in a way, by doing all of this testing, we make ourselves look bad.
On 31 December 2019, the WHO was informed about the first cases in Wuhan, China. During the January 2020 the disease spread further within China and also started to venture into neighbouring (and some further away) countries. During February new regional hotspots developed in South Korea, Italy and Iran. During March the disease spread further mostly in Central and Southern Europe and the USA. In the month of April the disease continues to spread in the USA, and within Europe the United Kingdom is taking center stage and Turkey and Russia are joining the group of new regional hotspots. Quickly growing numbers in Brazil and Peru are putting South America on the map in May, India does the same for South Asia. In June Brazil overtook the USA in terms of new confirmed cases.
The highest number of new cases in June 2020 was recorded in Brazil (878.977), followed by USA (803.596), India (384.697), Russia (242.006), India (149.093) and Chile (181.141). In the month of June there are cases in 195 countries/territories.
Brazil is also recording the most deaths that month (29.744), followed by USA (23.563), Mexico (17.233), India (11.792) and UK (5.199).
Read more on the chronology of the pandemic in our blog.
