[box type=”info” align=”” class=”” width=””]by Katharina Buchholz, [/box]
The death toll from the coronavirus is increasing steadily around the world. Hard-hit countries like France, Italy and Spain have recently experienced some easing of their daily death counts, which can be seen as an indicator that there might be some relief on the horizon. According to figures available on Worldometers, Spain recorded between 400 and 435 deaths per day recently, down from a high of 961 on April 2. Italy recorded only between 400 and 500 deaths recently per day after having reached a high of 919 daily deaths on March 27.
Figures from France show that many coronavirus deaths remain uncounted. The country periodically adds deaths recorded in care homes to its daily tally, resulting in spikes. The country most recently recorded close to 550 deaths in a day. Research by The Economist suggest that many countries experience excess deaths that are not included in coronavirus tallies and not explained otherwise, which means that the actual number of deaths caused by the virus is actually higher than the official totals suggest.
The U.S. has become the country hit hardest by the pandemic. Here, daily death counts have not entered a downwards trend yet and reached a new high of 2,683 deaths Tuesday – the highest daily death count officially recorded in the pandemic so far.
China, where the outbreak began, never officially featured daily death rates as high as those recorded in Europe and the U.S. – despite recently correcting death counts in Hubei province, where Wuhan is located, upwards. Earlier, the number of urns delivered to funeral homes in the city had already suggest daily deaths counts could have been a lot higher and should amount up to several thousands more than the approximately 2,500 deaths initially confirmed by the Chinese government in Hubei province (now corrected upwards to 3,869 in Hubei and approximately 4,600 in China).
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