There are now officially over 5 million confirmed cases of Coronavirus around the world.
So where are the most infected places? The most infected country in the world is still the USA, with over 1 in 5 Coronavirus cases worldwide being there.
The UK, where we’re writing from, is 5th in the total cases tally, and 2nd in the world regarding total deaths, (but it’s not a fair comparison, as it’s likely we have “over counted” and other countries haven’t used the same metrics as us).
Overall, the death toll is over 330,000 for the disease now, and over 2m have recovered. In a large part of the world, the virus seems to be slowing down due to lockdown measures, and because people are becoming immune to the virus after catching it. It’s a highly infectious disease remember, and a relatively high % of cases are asymptomatic or very mild, so it’s not insane to suggest the global case number is in-fact over 10 million, however only 5 million have been confirmed past and present.
Scientists are still trying to figure out why the death rate differs so much depending on region. For example, Russia have 60k more confirmed cases than the UK, yet they have 90% less deaths than the UK number of 36,000; they have around 3,000.
But despite all these worrying figures, it does really seem to be slowing up in a lot of places, including the UK. Scientists are getting closer to a vaccine every day, and investing huge amounts of money into finding one. Oxford university has confirmed that over £1.2 billion could be spent on vaccine research and development, suggesting they could be getting ever closer, as investors, companies and countries don’t just blindly spend (or plan to spend) that amount of cash.
Even now, as numbers fall in places around the world, it’s important to keep social distancing the best you can, and practice good hygiene, because it’s not over yet, and we don’t want a second wave of cases later in the year, if we can prevent it.
