The coronavirus pandemic has killed more than one million people worldwide so far.
Most of them were in the United States.
Now a study calls even higher numbers - How deadly is the virus really?
The numbers are more drastic than ever before: Over a million people are now in the
coronavirus pandemic *
died.
Not only in
Germany
and
Europe
politicians are alarmed *, because the number of cases is rising rapidly again worldwide.
A
British trade journal is
now announcing new, terrifying figures.
Great Britain - The
UN Secretary General António Guterres described
the currently announced number of
fatalities
that the
corona virus
has claimed worldwide
as an “agonizing milestone”
.
Over a million people have died as a
result of the infection
.
The
USA
has the most to mourn with over 205,000 deaths.
And not only there, but all over the world, the numbers continue to rise rapidly.
But the true extent of the
coronavirus pandemic
is said to be much worse than previously thought.
Since it began, more than 33 million people worldwide have been proven to have
Covid-19.
The English journal
The Economist is
now reporting
that between 500 and 730 million people are actually infected.
This would
affect
9.3 percent of the world's population
.
Survey: Have you already been tested for the coronavirus?
One million corona infections in January - today it should be up to 730 million
The report is based on "serostudies" in which the
subjects'
blood serum is
tested
for
antibodies
.
From the evaluation of a total of 279 anti-body studies from 19 countries, the
Economist
report concludes
that there
must have been around one million infected people
as early
as January
.
When the
coronavirus pandemic reached
its peak
in May
, five million people worldwide fell ill every day.
According to the
Economist
,
this hitherto unimagined, frightening
number of cases
is
mainly due to the fact that many of those infected are barely noticeably ill for themselves * - and so many of the people who
are infected with
the
coronavirus
are not infected recognized and thus cannot be registered.
If you believe the estimates of the trade journal, there are
more than four times as many infected people *
in
Germany
than previously known.
In
India
, the known number of infected people could even multiply 44 times.
How has the pandemic progressed — and where is it headed?
The covid numbers, explained 👇 https://t.co/3AY3oRFzkq
- The Economist (@TheEconomist) September 29, 2020
Is the coronavirus less deadly than thought?
But what can you really conclude from these findings?
It would be conceivable, for example, that the
coronavirus is
less deadly than previously assumed.
Experts
around the world still assume that many
deaths
- especially in countries with inadequate
medical care
- were wrongly not attributed to an infection with the
novel coronavirus
.
Many people would have died of the
lung infection
without having taken a test.
All those victims of the virus would then not be included in the
statistics
, summarizes the news portal OE24.
According to
US scientists
,
more than a million people have died of
infection
worldwide
since the beginning of the
coronavirus pandemic
.
One country stands out in terms of the numbers: the
USA
.
While US President Donald Trump * denied the existence of the virus for weeks, even months, his country has around a fifth of all deaths recorded worldwide.
In the
United States
, most people worldwide died from the
coronavirus
.
This is
evident
from figures from
Johns Hopkins University
.
Now back to the
Economist's
thesis
: not everyone
infected
in the US will have started treatment in
hospital
- some because they could not have afforded medical care, others because they might not have noticed that they were have the
coronavirus
.
In addition, not all of the
dead in the USA were
tested
for the
virus
in the period from January to today
- so the numbers here could also be many times higher than the numbers just announced.
In
developing countries
, the
test capacities are
still inadequate
to examine
neither the living nor
the
dead
for a
coronavirus infection
.
The drastic corrections * that the
Economist is
trying to make to the current global figures could well make sense.
(cos) * Merkur.de is part of the Ippen-Digital network.
Video: There are more than 1 million corona deaths worldwide - the USA has most of the victims:
List of rubric lists: © Omar Martínez / dpa / Picture Alliance