Corona spread worldwide: data and facts

The corona virus spreads worldwide. An overview of the current situation and the number of infections and fatalities.

• The Coronavirus Sars-CoV-2 * first appeared in the Chinese city of Wuhan in December 2019
• Europe has now become the epicenter of the corona pandemic
• Johns Hopkins University provides current data and facts

Source: Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore (Maryland, USA), case numbers up to March 25, 2020, as of 1:40 p.m.

Baltimore - Anyone who is currently looking for numbers on the corona crisis will sooner or later end up at a university in the USA. Johns Hopkins University from Baltimore, Maryland, is one of the most cited universities these days. It provides global data on the coronavirus pandemic and is generally considered the most credible source of corona numbers. In Germany, too, data from the private university is used rather than from the local federal authority for infectious diseases, the Robert Koch Institute (RKI).

Corona numbers: Different authorities in Germany collect the data

The federal system of the Federal Republic means that different authorities in the federal states collect, bundle and publish the data at different times. The first ones are usually the local health authorities. They transmit their data to the state health authorities.

Depending on who publishes the figures here and when, the data from the outside can no longer match. The RKI collects the numbers from the countries - and therefore automatically lags behind with the publication. The World Health Organization (WHO), in turn, receives the information from the national authorities - that is, even later.

Another good source is the website of the 17-year-old student Avi Schiffmann. The high school student from Seattle, Washington, USA, closed an information gap early on with his website ncov2019.live and attracted millions of users long before authorities or scientific institutes provided global figures about the pandemic. “It started as a small project after Christmas. Of course, I had no idea how big the virus and my website would be, ”the student told the German Press Agency. The homepage presents the most important facts about the global coronavirus crisis: illnesses, deaths, seriously ill patients and recoveries. The numbers are updated every minute.

A great info initiative from 17-year-old @AviSchiffmann https://t.co/rNDdBM2rRs # SARSCoV2

Corona virus first appeared in Wuhan

The novel coronavirus Sars CoV-2 first appeared in the Chinese metropolis of Wuhan at the end of December 2019. This starting point is also the reason why US President Donald Trump never speaks of the corona virus in his speeches, but always speaks of the "Chinese virus" - a peculiarity that has already brought him a lot of criticism.

After the first appearance, virus spread all over the world in the following months. WHO has identified Europe as the epicenter, where the number of infected people has recently skyrocketed. In the meantime, numerous countries have reacted to the corona virus with rigorous measures. Germany has also sealed off its external borders with France, Denmark, Austria and Switzerland, and on March 22 a contact ban was also issued.

Corona crisis: Italy with shockingly high death rate

The worst hit was Italy. Particularly striking is the enormously high lethality, which generally fluctuates strongly between the individual countries. While the death rate in Germany is 0.4 percent, it is currently almost 10 percent in Italy. The reasons for these differences have to do with the frequency of the tests, the different quality of the health systems and the average age of the infected.

By Christian Stör

* fr.de is part of the nationwide Ippen-Digital editors network