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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 the country to country basis, as well as between rural and urban settings and different groups of people. 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 global population of nearly 7.6 billion. Moreover, the estimate also suggests that the coronavirus kills around 0.14 percent of people infected which is slightly deadlier than seasonal flu which kills 0.1 percent of its patients. 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.
According to WHO millions of infections were not picked up during the first wave of the coronavirus pandemic in which nations 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 an average of 9000 cases of the virus are being reported daily but the experts are of the view that the original figure was over 100,000 during April when the virus was at its peak in the country, but the country was unable to test people at the pace required to know how the virus was really spreading.
Dr. Ryan, while speaking to 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 seeing a rise in deaths again. According to him the situation in the Western Pacific and Africa is rather more positive.
Deaths from coronavirus around the world have reached one million last week, approximately nine months after the first person was infected with the virus in January in Wuhan, China. The United States has suffered the most deaths with more than 200,000 people died of the virus, followed by Brazil with more than 142,000 deaths, then India with 96000 deaths; Mexico with 76000 and the United Kingdom with 43000 deaths up till now. The deaths from covid19 doubled from half a 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 one person dying every 16 seconds. It means that 340 people die on average in the time it takes to watch a soccer match.
Health experts around the world remain concerned that the official figure for coronavirus cases worldwide and also the deaths from the virus does not truly represent the real tally because of inadequate recording and testing and a prospect of concealment by some nations.
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