According to the Johns Hopkins Coronavirus Resource Center, the total number of global COVID-19 cases has passed 6.1 million, with more than 2.7 million recovered and 385,000 fatalities.
Italy, Spain, France and all Europe, are starting to see some positive light at the end of the tunnel. However, the rest of the world has to begin to produce significative numbers that should worry all the world.
Brazil has half a million cases. In India, the cases surge dramatically, and Peru has the second-high numbers on cases in Latin America.
What worries me most is the checks that are carried out in some countries.
Those numbers that are indicated as tests “for every million inhabitants”. It is one of the best indicators for understanding the exact amount of Covid-19 cases in a nation.
In “first wave” countries, Italy, Spain, France, England, Germany … this number fluctuates between 60 / 70,000 tests per million inhabitants.
To be clear, in England 4,043,686 tests were carried out (as of yesterday), equal to 59.593 per million inhabitants.
In Italy this multiplier is 62,202 per million inhabitants and remaining in Europe, the lowest numbers have been recorded in the Netherlands (20,723 per million citizens), Sweden (23,450), Poland (23,743), Romania (22,439) and Hungary (17,987).
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The numbers above also explain why the cases of infections are among the lowest in Europe in those countries.
However, when we go to other countries in the world, the numbers lead us to very different considerations.
Let’s start with Brazil. Two hundred twelve million people, about half a million infections, based on only 900,000 tests, 4,378 per million inhabitants!
In practice, more than 50% of the tests gave “positive” results. It is a frightening number, which makes us think that there are villages and geographical areas in Brazil where the risk of disappearing is highly elevated.
Staying in America, there is also the worrying case in Mexico. Ninety thousand infected out of 245 thousand tested—only 1,901 tests per million inhabitants.
We have seen all the reports on Sky News from Mexico City, where the dead are definitely out of control and where there are no coffins available anymore. The bodies are piled up for days in plastic bags as rubbish.
Moving to another area of the world, we end up in Yemen, bordering on Saudi Arabia, Oman and other Arab countries that have a considerable number of cases of Covid-19. However, in Yemen, the recorded cases are zero.
Not because’ a “totalitarian regime” controls everything, simply because’ there is no means of carrying out controls. People die in large numbers without anyone being able to certify why. Funerals are above average, new cemeteries open in fields in the middle of cities and fill up quickly. But there are no registered cases. After a war that made this country one of the most devastated in the world, the risk of disappearing for the Yemen people is real.
The jump in India is short. One hundred eighty thousand cases, a check linked to 2,618 tests per million inhabitants. We all know the state of health facilities and living conditions in Indian slums. There are only around 5,000 dead. There is no need to add much words and consideration to those numbers.
What do we get out of this analysis? Many things for sure.
Deep thoughts that show us that the problem is far from being resolved.
Even if in Europe, in the next three months the virus will be eradicated, if the problems in the rest of the world are not solved, the virus will travel back to us. We are risking to create a second wave worse than the first. In practice, we must have two primary instincts, that of survival and that of humanitarian aid.
We cannot allow certain peoples to disappear; we cannot turn our backs if the problem is no longer here. Human beings are all the same, whether they are Indians or Chileans, Italians or Kenyans.
Hopefully, a cure and vaccine will be available soon.
However, it is not right now the time to be snobbish. We must save ourselves but at the same time all those people. People who, without defences of any kind, are fighting a war that will undoubtedly lose if it is not helped by us, that we are probably winning that war.