COVID-19: China Is Actually Not Hard Hit At All

The international statistics of the COVID-19 outbreak generally show the total number of cases by country and the source of the outbreak - China - has to date the largest total number of cases at 81,218 (as of 12 Noon today from the Worldmeters web site ).  Catching up is Italy with 69,176 cases and in third place is the United States at 59,966 followed by Spain at 47,610.  However, these numbers do not adjust for the vastly different population sizes of these countries which provides a more accurate assessment of the relative impact relative to population size. China after all has over 1 billion people whereas Luxembourg is under 1 million.

Figure 1 plots the top 30 countries in terms of total case numbers by total cases per 1 million population.  The most affected country in terms of cases per 1 million of population is actually Luxembourg at 2,129 cases per 1 million(M) people.  Next, comes Switzerland at 1,217 cases per 1M followed by Italy at 1,144 per 1M, then Spain at 1,018 and then Austria at 620.  The United States comes in 17th place in this ranking at 77 per 1M and Canada 22nd at 77 total cases per 1M.  Where is China? It currently is in 25th place at 56 cases per 1M people.

 

Figure 2 plots the top 30 countries in terms of total case numbers by total deaths per 1M population.  The most deaths per 1M population have occurred in Italy at 113 followed by Spain at 73 and then Iran at 25.  The United States currently stands at 2 deaths per 1M people while Canada comes in at 0.7 deaths per 1M.  As for China?  It ranks 15th virtually tied with the United States at 2 per 1M people.

 

The failure of the Chinese government to properly take initial steps to contain the spread of the virus enabled it to become a very successful export particularly to those countries with very open economies in terms of trade and travel.  That the Chinese government appears to have finally contained the virus within its border is reassuring but the corona virus cat so to speak is now out of the bag.  Europe has borne the brunt of the spread.  As for deaths, Italy and Spain have truly been outliers with very high death rates and why that is the case is indeed an important question as the rest of the world deals with this situation.

That's all for now.