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The number of confirmed infections has hovered around 250,000 a day for weeks, but in recent days the number of cases has started to approach 300,000 again. One of those days fits into the daily fluctuation, but the seven-day moving average started to slowly rise again:
Our world map, drawn from data from Johns Hopkins University, clearly shows which regions are responsible for the acceleration. The most worrying situation continues to be India, where an average of 70,000 new cases per day have been registered in the last week. In Latin America, the situation is not softening either, since although Brazil has managed to slow down the rate of spread somewhat (here the figures from recent days are not convincing either), the epidemic in other countries in the region continues to accelerate. The situation in Peru and Argentina in particular is remarkable.
How was the map made?
Using country-level data from the Johns Hopkins University database, we analyzed the average number of infections recorded per day over the past week. We compare this with the situation a month ago and plot the percentage change on the map. The greater the increase, the stronger the orange hue of the country, the greater the decrease, the greener. In countries with a low number of infections, there can be large positive and negative changes as a percentage, so we adjust the color scale by marking the country with the strongest color at 30%. It is important to emphasize that the map does not represent the general situation of the epidemic on an absolute scale, but the change in the individual situation of each country compared to its own situation a month earlier. So of course, while orange Hungary and green Brazil are useless, this does not mean that we have much more of the virus. “Only” is that the number of tens of thousands of cases in Brazil has decreased slightly in the last month, while it has increased in Hungary. Therefore, the color differences on the map indicate where the virus is more or less spreading compared to the situation in the previous month.
We celebrated during the summer that high temperatures would drastically slow down the coronavirus. Recent data from Africa is also strong evidence that this is not the case – and in Ethiopia we see more than a thousand cases a day.
The situation in Europe is the most important thing for us. In the spring, the large Western economies were the main focal point of the coronavirus epidemic and, sadly, this is the case more and more. In each of the 5 major economies, the number of cases exceeds 1,000, in France the differential began to accelerate sharply and in Spain the rate reached the first wave. On a positive note, the disease is spreading more among young people, requiring fewer severe cases and deaths, but experts worry that if the second wave of the coronavirus becomes strong, it will sooner or later reach old age.
Cover image: Getty Images
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