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LONDON: Global COVID-19 deaths reached 250,000 on Monday (May 4) after registered infections exceeded 3.5 million, according to a Reuters count of official government data, although the death rate has been slowed down.
Countries in North America and Europe accounted for the majority of new deaths and cases reported in recent days, but the number increased from smaller bases in Latin America, Africa, and Russia.
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Globally, there were 3,062 new deaths and 61,923 new cases in the past 24 hours, bringing the total number of cases to 3.58 million.
According to the World Health Organization (WHO), that easily exceeds the estimated 140,000 deaths worldwide in 2018 caused by measles, and compares with around 3 to 5 million cases of serious illness caused annually by seasonal influenza. .
EXPLORE: Interactive map of all confirmed cases reported around the world
While the current trajectory of COVID-19 is well below the 1918 Spanish flu, which infected about 500 million people, killing at least 10 percent of patients, experts fear that the available data is underestimating the true impact of the pandemic.
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Concerns arise when several countries begin to ease the tight blockages that have been credited for helping to contain the spread of the virus.
“We could easily have a second or third wave because many places are not immune,” Peter Collignon, an infectious disease doctor and microbiologist at Canberra Hospital, told Reuters. He noted that the world was far below herd immunity, requiring that about 60 percent of the population have recovered from the disease.
The first COVID-19-related death was reported on January 10 in Wuhan, China, after the coronavirus emerged there in December. Global deaths grew at a rate of 1 percent to 2 percent in recent days, down from 14 percent on March 21, according to Reuters data.
DEATH RATE ANOMALIES
Death rates from registered infections vary greatly from country to country.
Collignon said that any country with a death rate of more than 2 percent almost certainly had underreported case numbers. Health experts fear that these proportions may worsen in regions and countries less prepared to face the health crisis.
“If your death rate is more than 2 percent, you will have missed many cases,” he said, noting that countries overwhelmed by the outbreak were less likely to test in the community and record deaths outside of hospitals.
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In the United States, about half of the country’s state governors partially reopened their economies over the weekend, while others, including New York Governor Andrew Cuomo, declared the move to be premature.
In Britain, Prime Minister Boris Johnson, who fought COVID-19 last month, said the country was at the top but it was still too early to relax blockade measures.
Even in countries where suppression of the disease has been deemed successful, such as Australia and New Zealand, which have had low daily rates of new infections for weeks, officials have been cautious.
Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison has preached the total lifting of restrictions on the widespread public adoption of a mobile phone tracking app and increased testing levels.
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