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Coronavirus tracker: the latest figures as countries fight Covid-19 resurgence | Free to read

The FT analyses the scale of outbreaks and the number of deaths around the world

FT Visual & Data Journalism team

December 1, 2020

The human cost of coronavirus has continued to mount, with more than 62.9m cases confirmed globally and more than 1.45m people known to have died.

The World Health Organization declared the outbreak epidemic trajectory and government response interactive graphics to replace static charts

May 5: All charts now include deaths away from hospitals where reported

April 29: Excess mortality charts added, showing that official Covid-19 death counts may significantly underestimate the pandemic’s true toll

Stream chart showing 7 day moving average of Covid deaths in global regions. A recent resurgence in Europe means the global daily average has now eclipsed the global figure of 6,800 from the spring peak now hitting 10,123

Europe’s average count of coronavirus-related deaths overtook Asia’s in early March, with Italy, Spain and the UK becoming the global hotspots. From mid-April, focus shifted to the US, where the number of deaths has remained consistently high, although the focus of the epidemic has shifted from the northeast to southern and western states.

Latin America then became the epicentre of the pandemic, with the region accounting for almost a half of deaths each day. However, a recent surge of cases in Europe means Covid-19 remains very much a global pandemic.

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This FT interactive tool allows you to explore data about the pandemic to better understand the disease’s spread and trajectory in countries around the world, and in US states.

Global coronavirus cases and deaths have climbed again since the beginning of June. The centre of the pandemic has shifted to Latin America with Panama, Peru, Bolivia, Brazil, Mexico, and Colombia currently reporting the greatest number of daily deaths as a share of population.

Large emerging market countries such as Brazil, Russia, Mexico, India and South Africa are all showing fatalities on an upward trend.

New confirmed cases have also been increasing in the US, particularly in southern and western states such as Florida, Texas, Arizona and California, and there are indications of a resurgence of cases in several EU countries.

Chart showing that death rates have climbed far above historical averages in many countries that have faced Covid-19 outbreaks

There are concerns, however, that reported Covid-19 deaths are not capturing the true impact of coronavirus on mortality around the world. The FT has gathered and analysed data on TRACKING GOVERNMENTS’ CHANGING CORONAVIRUS RESPONSES

From business closures to movement restrictions, some countries’ policies show first signs of easing. Follow the changes here using our interactive tool.

As Covid-19 spread beyond China, governments responded by implementing containment measures with varying degrees of restriction. Researchers at the University of Oxford’s Blavatnik School of Government have compiled data on a range of government response measures, such as school and workplace closures and restrictions on travel and gatherings, to create a stringency index.

East Asian countries including South Korea and Vietnam were the first to follow China in implementing widespread containment measures, with much of Europe, North America and Africa taking much longer to bring in tough measures.

India’s sudden implementation of a strict 21-day lockdown propelled it to the top of the index, making it the first country reported to have hit the index’s upper limit of 100 for more than a single day.

Help the Blavatnik School of Government at Oxford university improve the stringency index used in this map by providing direct feedback.

Live-updating proportional symbol map of the world showing the cumulative death toll from Covid-19 by country. Data updated daily.

Live-updating proportional symbol map of Europe showing the cumulative death toll from Covid-19 by country. Data updated daily.

The death toll has now passed 100 in 47 European countries. The region currently accounts for 48 per cent of new daily cases, well down from the peak of more than 80 per cent in March.

Proportional symbol map showing the total number of deaths attributed to Covid-19 in each US state, using data from the Covid Tracking Project.

Coronavirus has spread to all 50 states in the US. More than 13.3m cases and 257,800 deaths have been confirmed in the country.

SOURCES

Unless otherwise stated, national-level case and deaths data come from the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control.

Data for the US its territories come from the Covid Tracking Project.

UK deaths data after January 28 come from the UK Department of Health and Social Care, including its revised time series after March 6. On July 2, the UK’s methodology for reporting positive cases changed to remove 30,302 duplicates identified when combining testing data from hospitals (“pillar 1”) and private sector labs (“pillar 2”). Prior to this date, the UK case data are the sum of the revised totals published by Public Health England, Public Health Scotland, Public Health Wales, and the Northern Ireland Department of Health.

Deaths data for Spain before July 3 come from revisions published by the Spanish Ministry of Health. 209 deaths that could not be attributed to a specific date have been distributed uniformly across the remaining distribution.

The data for Chile, China, France, India as well as for the US states of New York and New Jersey have been adjusted to redistribute additional cases or deaths that were added after they occured in proportion to the previous distribution of deaths or cases in that jurisdiction.

The full excess mortality dataset used for this analysis is freely available for download on Github. It is compiled from data originally produced by official statistics agencies or civil registries in each of the jurisdictions mentioned. The full list of sources is also available on our Github repository.

Help us improve these charts: Please email William Rohde Madsen, Caroline Nevitt, Alan Smith, Martin Stabe, Cale Tilford and Aleksandra Wisniewska. Edited by Adrienne Klasa

Corrections: Due to a typographical error, the first paragraph of this story incorrectly stated the number of people who had died from Covid-19 for several hours on April 9. At the time, that figure should have read 87,741. Due to a typographical error, a map on this story temporarily showed an incorrect number of deaths from Covid-19 in Italy on May 14. At the time, that figure should have read 31,106.

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Coronavirus tracker: the latest figures as countries fight Covid-19 resurgence | Free to read

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