China felt the initial brunt of the Covid-19 epidemic. At the peak of its outbreak in mid-February, the country saw more than 5,000 cases in a single day. As of May 27, Chinese health authorities had acknowledged over 84,103 cases and 4,638 deaths – most of them within the province of Hubei. Since March, however, the country has seen a remarkable slowdown. On March 17, China recorded just 39 new cases of the virus. Most of the country's new cases are imported from elsewhere in the world – for now at least, it appears that China has its outbreak under control.
But while things were slowing down in China, the outbreak started picking up in the rest of the world. There are now confirmed cases in at least 200 countries and territories. The US has seen the highest number of cases. The country – which has been criticised for its slow rollout of testing and confused approach to the crisis – now has 1,681,418 confirmed infections and 98,929 deaths. With 370,680 confirmed cases and 3,807 deaths, Russia's mortality rate appears to be particularly low. The true death toll may be underreported because the country's statistics only include the deaths of people directly attributed to Covid-19.
After the UK, Italy has seen the highest number of deaths in Europe, with 32,955 deaths and 230,555 confirmed infections, mostly in the north of the country. The country has had the longest-running lockdown of any country and on May 4 started to ease its restrictions for the first time after nine weeks.
Spain is also in the grip of a significant outbreak. The country has 236,259 confirmed infections and 27,117 deaths. There, citizens are under lockdown, with the government shutting all schools, bars, restaurants and non-essential supermarkets down. People are only allowed to leave their homes to buy food or to go to work. Germany has 181,200 confirmed cases and 8,386 deaths, a rate lower than many other European countries. Social distancing rules stayed in place until May 4, but the country is slowly relaxing its requirements with shops and schools starting to re-open their doors. Austria, which has 16,557 confirmed cases and 643 deaths was the first European country to partially lift its lockdown on April 14.
While the number of new cases continues to rise sharply, people are also recovering from the infection. Globally, 2,288,965 people have recovered from Covid-19 – about 41 per cent of all of the people who had confirmed infections, although the true number of coronavirus cases will be much higher.
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****The End*************
We pray for all this virus to end