Based on a comparison of coronavirus deaths in 210 countries relative to their population, Peru had the most losses to COVID-19 up until July 13, 2022. As of the same date, the virus had infected over 557.8 million people worldwide, and the number of deaths had totaled more than 6.3 million. Note, however, that COVID-19 test rates can vary per country. Additionally, big differences show up between countries when combining the number of deaths against confirmed COVID-19 cases. The source seemingly does not differentiate between "the Wuhan strain" (2019-nCOV) of COVID-19, "the Kent mutation" (B.1.1.7) that appeared in the UK in late 2020, the 2021 Delta variant (B.1.617.2) from India or the Omicron variant (B.1.1.529) from South Africa.

The difficulties of death figures

This table aims to provide a complete picture on the topic, but it very much relies on data that has become more difficult to compare. As the coronavirus pandemic developed across the world, countries already used different methods to count fatalities, and they sometimes changed them during the course of the pandemic. On April 16, for example, the Chinese city of Wuhan added a 50 percent increase in their death figures to account for community deaths. These deaths occurred outside of hospitals and went unaccounted for so far. The state of New York did something similar two days before, revising their figures with 3,700 new deaths as they started to include “assumed” coronavirus victims. The United Kingdom started counting deaths in care homes and private households on April 29, adjusting their number with about 5,000 new deaths (which were corrected lowered again by the same amount on August 18). This makes an already difficult comparison even more difficult. Belgium, for example, counts suspected coronavirus deaths in their figures, whereas other countries have not done that (yet). This means two things. First, it could have a big impact on both current as well as future figures. On April 16 already, UK health experts stated that if their numbers were corrected for community deaths like in Wuhan, the UK number would change from 205 to “above 300”. This is exactly what happened two weeks later. Second, it is difficult to pinpoint exactly which countries already have “revised” numbers (like Belgium, Wuhan or New York) and which ones do not. One work-around could be to look at (freely accessible) timelines that track the reported daily increase of deaths in certain countries. Several of these are available on our platform, such as for Belgium, Italy and Sweden. A sudden large increase might be an indicator that the domestic sources changed their methodology.

Where are these numbers coming from?

The numbers shown here were collected by Johns Hopkins University, a source that manually checks the data with domestic health authorities. For the majority of countries, this is from national authorities. In some cases, like China, the United States, Canada or Australia, city reports or other various state authorities were consulted. In this statistic, these separately reported numbers were put together. For more information or other freely accessible content, please visit our dedicated Facts and Figures page.

This publication provides the most timely picture available of people using NHS funded secondary mental health, learning disabilities and autism services in England. These are experimental statistics which are undergoing development and evaluation. This information will be of use to people needing access to information quickly for operational decision making and other purposes. More detailed information on the quality and completeness of these statistics is made available later in our Mental Health Bulletin: Annual Report publication series. • COVID-19 and the production of statistics Due to the coronavirus illness (COVID-19) disruption, the quality and coverage of some of our statistics has been affected, for example by an increase in non-submissions for some datasets. We are also seeing some different patterns in the submitted data. For example, fewer patients are being referred to hospital and more appointments being carried out via phone/telemedicine/email. Therefore, data should be interpreted with care over the COVID-19 period. • Update on previously unpublished measures 72 hour follow-up measures (MHS78, MHS79 and MHS80) have now been released for Performance October 2020 onwards. Data for these measures for previous reporting periods will be published as soon as they are available. NHS Digital apologises for the inconvenience caused. • Early release of statistics To support the ongoing COVID-19 work, Provisional January 2021 monthly statistics were made available early and presented on our supplementary information pages. https://digital.nhs.uk/data-and-information/supplementary-information/2021/provisional-january-2021-mental-health-statistics • Changing existing measures The move to MHSDS version 4.1 from April 2020 has brought with it changes to the dataset; the construction of a number of measures have been changed as a result. From Performance August 2020 onwards, the methodology for calculating restrictive interventions (MHS76 and MHS77) in the reporting month has been updated to include all restraints that span several months. Previously the measure only includes restraints that started or ended in the month and did not include those spanning more than 2 months. This change predominately impacts segregation. From Performance September 2020 onwards, the methodology for MHS26 (Delayed transfer of care) has been updated. Previously only the first midnight of a delayed transfer of care within a hospital provider spell was excluded. The updated methodology now excludes the first midnight for delay start date where there is a gap of more than one day within the same hospital provider spell. This is to take into account valid gaps between delay reasons. Full details of these changes are available in the associated Metadata file. From Performance September 2020 onwards, a presentational change has been introduced to restrictive interventions csv files to exclude providers with no inpatients. • New measures A number of new measures have been included from Performance July 2020 onwards: MHS81 Number of Detentions MHS82 Number of Short Term Orders MHS83 Number of uses of Section 136 MHS84 Number of Community Treatment Orders Full details of these are available in the associated Metadata file.