This month has seen the pandemic follow different paths across the world. In North America, Canada, the U.S., and Mexico have seen big declines in cases and deaths due to vaccines. Europe is also seeing declines, particularly in Western Europe. South America is still in the midst of a wave, including Paraguay and Uruguay, which until recently had been little impacted. It is still difficult to tell what is really happening in Africa, though nominally case and death numbers remain low.
In the Middle East, countries like Lebanon and Jordan are now seeing their waves recede. It is South and East Asia where the situation may be going through the greatest change. As everyone knows, India is suffering terribly and the "official" numbers are probably dramatic under counts of the reality. But elsewhere in the region things are also not moving in a good direction. Countries like Nepal, Sri Lanka, Thailand, and Malaysia are seeing the highest case and death counts since the start of the pandemic. In absolute terms the numbers in these countries are still relatively low compared to the rest of the world, but are much higher than they've experienced before. Where things go from here is the big question.
How Many Covid Deaths?
As I've emphasized in these monthly reports there is a great deal of uncertainty in the death counts reported by each country. In some instances (Russia, South Africa, Mexico) we have good evidence of substantial under counts based on overall death counts and/or statements by government officials. As of today Worldometer reports just under 3.5 million deaths in total. I've estimated conservatively that this is probably 1 to 1.5 million too low. More recently, The Economist undertook a more detailed analysis and concluded the likely Covid death toll is about 10 million, due mostly to under counts in Africa and Asia.
The Official Data
Reported below are all countries with population of more than one million which have reported death rates in excess of 1,000 per million (next month I will raise the threshold).
This month saw the first country (Hungary) to exceed an official death toll of more than 0.3% of its population.
Eight countries exceeded 1,000 per million during the same time period: Tunisia, Netherlands, Germany. Greece, Ukraine, Georgia, Uruguay, Paraguay. Every large country in South America is now above 1,000, except for Venezuela and no one has a clue what is really happening there.
For reference the official death count in India is now 299,296. To reach 1,000 per million India would have to reach 1,380,000 deaths, or more than double the current U.S. total (The Economist estimates the real India death count is already in excess of one million).
The list below shows the death rate per million, along with the % increase since last month. New countries are in BOLD and all increases of 20% or more in deaths are underlined.
Europe
Hungary (3058/13%), Czech Republic (2798/4%), Bosnia & Herzogovina (2792/12%), North Macedonia (2542/15%), Bulgaria (2534/14%), Slovakia (2249/11%), Belgium ( 2132/4%), Slovenia (2092/4%), Italy (2073/6%)
Croatia (1931/17%), Poland (1928/14%), UK (1873/<1%), Spain (1702/3%), Portugal (1673/1%), France (1659/6%), Romania (1563/11%), Lithuania 1552/9%), Moldova (1508/7%)
Sweden (1415/4%), Latvia (1244/10%), Switzerland (1237/2%), Austria (1165/5%), Ukraine (1133/20%), Greece (1131/20%), Germany (1047/8%), Netherlands (1021/3%)
North America
USA (1815/3%), Mexico (1700/4%), Panama (1445/2%)
South America
Brazil (2096/17%), Peru (2031/16%), Colombia (1640/20%), Argentina (1617/21%), Chile (1474/11%), Bolivia (1173/9%), Ecuador (1129/11%), Paraguay (1142/46%), Uruguay (1094/76%)
Africa
Tunisia (1018)
Asia
Armenia (1478/11%), Georgia (1156/12%), Lebanon (1128/11%)
Five countries are between 1,000 and 900; Ireland (991), Estonia (934), South Africa (930), Iran (923), and Jordan (909).
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Fascinating article in Wired on whether Covid-19 could be transmitted as aerosol. The answer is yes, which as a practical matter, most of us were treating it like it was by spring 2020 but for some reason the public health community struggled with the concept. This explains why. Another related article here.
It is astonishing how much the desire to defeat Donald Trump influenced public health officials (see, for instance, the denunciation of even the possibility of a lab origin for covid in 2020 as a conspiracy theory versus the sudden acceptance of the possibility within the past month). I'd forgotten that in October 2020, the MIT Technology Review could proudly publish an article about one public health expert's effort to mobilize efforts to prevent Trump from approving a vaccine prior to the election. More recently that same expert had the temerity to tweet out about how many lives were saved each week by vaccines.
— Random Critical Analysis 🎲🤔🕵️ (@RCAFDM) May 15, 2021
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