It's going faster and faster: within around six weeks, the number of confirmed corona infections in the world has doubled from ten to 20 million.
Washington (dpa) - The number of corona infections known worldwide has risen from 15 million to over 20 million in less than three weeks. That came out on Monday from data from the Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore.
Around half of the confirmed infections were therefore in just three countries: the USA with more than five million infections, Brazil with over three million and a good two million in India.
The number of confirmed infections worldwide stood at ten million at the end of June and has therefore doubled within around six weeks. In addition to the most affected countries, the coronavirus pandemic continued to spread rapidly in Russia, South Africa, Mexico and several countries in South America.
According to Johns Hopkins, more than 730,000 people worldwide have died after being infected with the coronavirus. The number of victims has recently increased significantly more slowly than the number of new infections, partly due to better treatment options. The Sars-CoV-2 pathogen can cause the lung disease Covid-19, which can be life-threatening, especially for older and immunocompromised people.
The worst hit country in the world in absolute terms was the USA. In addition to the most confirmed infections with more than 163,000 victims, there are also the most deaths there. Brazil follows in second place with over 100,000 deaths.
The university's website is regularly updated with incoming data and therefore mostly shows a higher level than the official figures of the World Health Organization (WHO). In some cases, however, the numbers were recently revised downwards. According to WHO, there were 19.7 million confirmed infections and 728,000 deaths as of Monday. The pandemic began around the turn of the year in the Chinese metropolis of Wuhan.
© dpa-infocom, dpa: 200811-99-121142 / 3
Overview of the Johns Hopkins University
Johns Hopkins Country Mortality Data, English
Corona data from the WHO, English
