The World Health Organization (WHO) said on Monday that according to its best estimates around 10% of the world’s population have been infected by covid19. Dr. Michael Ryan, WHO’s head of emergencies, said these figures vary on a country to country basis, and also between rural and urban settings and people of different groups. The figure according to the estimates is 20 times more than the actual coronavirus cases worldwide which stand at 35 million.
According to the estimates of the WHO, around 760 million people may have contracted coronavirus worldwide based on the current world population of nearly 7.6 billion. Moreover, the estimate also suggests that the coronavirus kills nearly 0.14 percent of people infected, in comparison seasonal flu kills 0.1 percent of its patients, so coronavirus is slightly deadlier. The last estimate of WHO regarding the death rate of covid19 was 0.6 percent, in comparison. While 10% of the world population being infected with the virus might seem like a staggeringly high figure, the WHO and Dr. Ryan warn that 9 out of 10 people i.e. 90% of the world population are still vulnerable to the disease.
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According to WHO millions of cases were not picked up during the pandemic’s first wave in which governments struggled to develop tests in time due to the exponential growth of the virus, and because of which the actual coronavirus cases worldwide stand at only 35 million. For example, in the UK on average 9000 cases of the virus are being reported daily but the experts are of the view that the original figure might have been over 100,000 during April when the virus was at its peak in the country, but those cases were not reported because the government was not able to test people with the pace required to know the reasons of its spread.
Dr. Ryan, while speaking in a meeting of 34 executive board members of the WHO, said that Southeast Asia is experiencing a surge in new cases of the virus while the eastern Mediterranean and Europe are again seeing a rise in deaths due to the virus. According to him the situation in the Western Pacific and Africa is looking more positive.
Deaths from coronavirus around the world have reached one million during the last few days, approximately 274 days after the first person was infected with the virus in January in Wuhan, China. The United States has suffered the most with the death figure crossing 200,00 due to the virus, Brazil is the 2nd worst-hit country with death figure reaching 142000, then India with 96000 deaths; Mexico with 76000 and the UK with 43000 deaths up till now. The deaths from covid19 doubled from 500,000 to 1 million within only three months.
Every 24 hours around the world more than 5400 people are dying of the virus, according to calculations. That makes 226 people dying in an hour or in every 16 seconds a person dies of the virus. It means that 340 people die on average in the 90 minutes it takes to watch a soccer match.
Health experts around the world are worried that the official figure for coronavirus cases worldwide and also the deaths from the virus does not truly show the actual tally because of limited recording and testing and a prospect of concealment by nations.