"We have a long way to go in this Covid-19 pandemic." Slowing down any excess optimism, the World Health Organization was alarmed on Wednesday by a record number of new infections in the world in one day. "In the past 24 hours, 106,000 cases have been reported to WHO - the highest number for a single day since the start of the epidemic," said organization director Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus. .
Worldwide, the number of confirmed cases doubled in a month, surpassing the 5 million threshold on Thursday. Figures, certainly worrying, but which deserve to be considered with caution. Explanations in five points.
Expanded test campaigns
First, because the test campaigns have intensified in many countries around the world. "Obviously, the more we test, the more we find," says Jean-Stéphane Dhersin, deputy scientific director of the National Institute of Mathematical Sciences and their interactions at the CNRS.
"Almost two thirds of these new cases have been reported in four countries," said the head of the WHO. They are the United States, Russia, Brazil and Saudi Arabia, specifies the latest report of the organization. In detail, more than 300,000 tests have been carried out every day on American soil since May 11, according to data from the Covid Tracking Project, almost twice as much as what the country did in early April.
Russia, the second country in the world in number of contaminations behind the American giant, has also accelerated its screening campaign. More than 4.46 million tests have already been carried out in the country, according to the Russian health agency Rospotrebnadzor. For its part, Saudi Arabia signed an agreement with China in April, providing for the delivery of 9 million tests in the kingdom. Only Brazil, on the verge of suffocation, is in dire need of tests.
Decreasing contamination
If one looks outside these states, the number of contaminations remains, for the most part, much lower than in previous weeks. The observation is particularly striking in Europe. In Spain for example, the number of new daily cases fell Thursday under the threshold of 500, against 6000 to 7000 in early April, according to data from John Hopkins University. Italy now has fewer than 700 confirmed infections per day, compared to 3,000 to 4,000 last month.
With the exception of South Korea, Asia has also seen the number of its infections drop, as in Singapore (448 Thursday versus 1,400 on April 20) or in Thailand (3 contaminations Thursday against 188 on March 22). For its part, China, where the virus appeared at the end of 2019, has declared its victory over the virus.
"Non-exponential" growth
If despite these trends, the number of infections continues to increase worldwide, this progression is stable, whereas an epidemic normally progresses exponentially. In concrete terms, John Hopkins University counted 99,000 new cases worldwide on Tuesday, a figure which effectively reflects one of the most significant increases in the number of infections since the start of the epidemic.
However, this daily threshold had also been reached on April 12, even though the epidemic had 1.8 million officially diagnosed cases… almost three times less than today. Conclusion: "the progression is regular, but not exponential", underlines Jean-Stéphane Dhersin.
A globally declining number of deaths
Still, the number of reported cases is not "necessarily the best indicator" to see the decline of an epidemic, said the specialist. Because remember, these figures obviously do not correspond to the real number of cases since no country tests all of its population. "It would then be necessary to look at the number of deaths in each state, although this count also deserves to be careful", reminds the researcher.
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"The number of deaths may be higher in a country which has fragile health structures," he recalls. Finally, the balance sheet may be undervalued by the authorities of a country (lack of transparency, partial settlement, etc.), as is suspected for Russia, Iran or China.
Regarding the number of deaths, the trend is downward in North America, Asia and Europe. While there were nearly 5,000 deaths every day on the European continent - with very heavy tolls in Spain and Italy in early April - this figure slowed considerably in May, reaching less than 2,000 deaths per day, according to data from the European Center for Disease Prevention and Control.
Same observation for North America which groups together on our graph, the United States, Canada and Mexico. At the end of April, there were no fewer than 5,000 deaths per day, adding up the balance sheets of these three states. This same figure now remains below the threshold of 3,000 dead.
South America, new home
Despite these encouraging data, certain regions of the world are still hard hit by the epidemic. At the head: South America which sees its number of contaminations and deaths dangerously increasing. Brazil this week became the third most affected country behind the United States and Russia. The state recorded Wednesday 1,179 deaths, a record threshold in a day. Likewise, deaths in Chile have increased 29% in the past 24 hours, bringing the total to 589.
The epidemic wave is thus waning on one side of the globe to be reborn on the other. And still leaves a number of researchers perplexed by the global record. "It is very difficult to decipher the dynamics of the virus in the world since the affected countries do not use the same measures to contain it. Bolsonaro's policy to counter the epidemic is not Macron's. From there, we can of course note that the epidemic is progressing more slowly but we do not yet have enough time to know precisely the reasons, ”concludes the specialist.
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