As of March 10, 2023, the death rate from COVID-19 in the state of New York was 397 per 100,000 people. New York is one of the states with the highest number of COVID-19 cases.

As of March 10, 2023, the state with the highest rate of COVID-19 cases was Rhode Island followed by Alaska. Around 103.9 million cases have been reported across the United States, with the states of California, Texas, and Florida reporting the highest numbers of infections.

From an epidemic to a pandemic The World Health Organization declared the COVID-19 outbreak as a pandemic on March 11, 2020. The term pandemic refers to multiple outbreaks of an infectious illness threatening multiple parts of the world at the same time; when the transmission is this widespread, it can no longer be traced back to the country where it originated. The number of COVID-19 cases worldwide is roughly 683 million, and it has affected almost every country in the world.

The symptoms and those who are most at risk Most people who contract the virus will suffer only mild symptoms, such as a cough, a cold, or a high temperature. However, in more severe cases, the infection can cause breathing difficulties and even pneumonia. Those at higher risk include older persons and people with pre-existing medical conditions, including diabetes, heart disease, and lung disease. Those aged 85 years and older have accounted for around 27 percent of all COVID deaths in the United States, although this age group makes up just two percent of the total population

The New York Times is releasing a series of data files with cumulative counts of coronavirus cases in the United States, at the state and county level, over time. We are compiling this time series data from state and local governments and health departments in an attempt to provide a complete record of the ongoing outbreak.

Since late January, The Times has tracked cases of coronavirus in real time as they were identified after testing. Because of the widespread shortage of testing, however, the data is necessarily limited in the picture it presents of the outbreak.

We have used this data to power our maps and reporting tracking the outbreak, and it is now being made available to the public in response to requests from researchers, scientists and government officials who would like access to the data to better understand the outbreak.

The data begins with the first reported coronavirus case in Washington State on Jan. 21, 2020. We will publish regular updates to the data in this repository.

This dataset is a per-state amalgamation of demographic, public health and other relevant predictors for COVID-19.

Deaths, Infections and Tests by State

The COVID Tracking Project: https://covidtracking.com/data/api

Used positive, death and totalTestResults from the API for, respectively, Infected, Deaths and Tested in this dataset. Please read the documentation of the API for more context on those columns

Predictor Data and Sources

Population (2020)

Density is people per meter squared https://worldpopulationreview.com/states/

ICU Beds and Age 60+

https://khn.org/news/as-coronavirus-spreads-widely-millions-of-older-americans-live-in-counties-with-no-icu-beds/

GDP

https://worldpopulationreview.com/states/gdp-by-state/

Income per capita (2018)

https://worldpopulationreview.com/states/per-capita-income-by-state/

Gini

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_by_Gini_coefficient

Unemployment (2020)

Rates from Feb 2020 and are percentage of labor force
https://www.bls.gov/web/laus/laumstrk.htm

Sex (2017)

Ratio is Male / Female
https://www.kff.org/other/state-indicator/distribution-by-gender/

Smoking Percentage (2020)

https://worldpopulationreview.com/states/smoking-rates-by-state/

Influenza and Pneumonia Death Rate (2018)

Death rate per 100,000 people
https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/pressroom/sosmap/flu_pneumonia_mortality/flu_pneumonia.htm

Chronic Lower Respiratory Disease Death Rate (2018)

Death rate per 100,000 people
https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/pressroom/sosmap/lung_disease_mortality/lung_disease.htm

Active Physicians (2019)

https://www.kff.org/other/state-indicator/total-active-physicians/

Hospitals (2018)

https://www.kff.org/other/state-indicator/total-hospitals

Health spending per capita

Includes spending for all health care services and products by state of residence. Hospital spending is included and reflects the total net revenue. Costs such as insurance, administration, research, and construction expenses are not included.
https://www.kff.org/other/state-indicator/avg-annual-growth-per-capita/

Pollution (2019)

Pollution: Average exposure of the general public to particulate matter of 2.5 microns or less (PM2.5) measured in micrograms per cubic meter (3-year estimate)
https://www.americashealthrankings.org/explore/annual/measure/air/state/ALL

Medium and Large Airports

For each state, number of medium and large airports https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_the_busiest_airports_in_the_United_States

Temperature (2019)

Note that FL was incorrect in the table, but is corrected in the Hottest States paragraph
https://worldpopulationreview.com/states/average-temperatures-by-state/
District of Columbia temperature computed as the average of Maryland and Virginia

Urbanization (2010)

Urbanization as a percentage of the population https://www.icip.iastate.edu/tables/population/urban-pct-states

Age Groups (2018)

https://www.kff.org/other/state-indicator/distribution-by-age/

School Closure Dates

Schools that haven't closed are marked NaN https://www.edweek.org/ew/section/multimedia/map-coronavirus-and-school-closures.html

Note that some datasets above did not contain data for District of Columbia, this missing data was found via Google searches manually entered.

Updates

• Notice of data discontinuation: Since the start of the pandemic, AP has reported case and death counts from data provided by Johns Hopkins University. Johns Hopkins University has announced that they will stop their daily data collection efforts after March 10. As Johns Hopkins stops providing data, the AP will also stop collecting daily numbers for COVID cases and deaths. The HHS and CDC now collect and visualize key metrics for the pandemic. AP advises using those resources when reporting on the pandemic going forward.

  • CDC Weekly case and death counts (national and state level)
  • CDC County level cases and deaths
  • HHS New hospital admissions
  • CDC NowCast COVID variant proportions (national and regional level)

• April 9, 2020

  • The population estimate data for New York County, NY has been updated to include all five New York City counties (Kings County, Queens County, Bronx County, Richmond County and New York County). This has been done to match the Johns Hopkins COVID-19 data, which aggregates counts for the five New York City counties to New York County.

• April 20, 2020

  • Johns Hopkins death totals in the US now include confirmed and probable deaths in accordance with CDC guidelines as of April 14. One significant result of this change was an increase of more than 3,700 deaths in the New York City count. This change will likely result in increases for death counts elsewhere as well. The AP does not alter the Johns Hopkins source data, so probable deaths are included in this dataset as well.

• April 29, 2020

  • The AP is now providing timeseries data for counts of COVID-19 cases and deaths. The raw counts are provided here unaltered, along with a population column with Census ACS-5 estimates and calculated daily case and death rates per 100,000 people. Please read the updated caveats section for more information.

• September 1st, 2020

  • Johns Hopkins is now providing counts for the five New York City counties individually.

• February 12, 2021

  • The Ohio Department of Health recently announced that as many as 4,000 COVID-19 deaths may have been underreported through the state’s reporting system, and that the "daily reported death counts will be high for a two to three-day period."
  • Because deaths data will be anomalous for consecutive days, we have chosen to freeze Ohio's rolling average for daily deaths at the last valid measure until Johns Hopkins is able to back-distribute the data. The raw daily death counts, as reported by Johns Hopkins and including the backlogged death data, will still be present in the new_deaths column.

• February 16, 2021

  - Johns Hopkins has reconciled Ohio's historical deaths data with the state.

  Overview

The AP is using data collected by the Johns Hopkins University Center for Systems Science and Engineering as our source for outbreak caseloads and death counts for the United States and globally.

The Hopkins data is available at the county level in the United States. The AP has paired this data with population figures and county rural/urban designations, and has calculated caseload and death rates per 100,000 people. Be aware that caseloads may reflect the availability of tests -- and the ability to turn around test results quickly -- rather than actual disease spread or true infection rates.

This data is from the Hopkins dashboard that is updated regularly throughout the day. Like all organizations dealing with data, Hopkins is constantly refining and cleaning up their feed, so there may be brief moments where data does not appear correctly. At this link, you’ll find the Hopkins daily data reports, and a clean version of their feed.

The AP is updating this dataset hourly at 45 minutes past the hour.

To learn more about AP's data journalism capabilities for publishers, corporations and financial institutions, go here or email kromano@ap.org.

Queries

Use AP's queries to filter the data or to join to other datasets we've made available to help cover the coronavirus pandemic

• Filter cases by state here

• Rank states by their status as current hotspots. Calculates the 7-day rolling average of new cases per capita in each state: https://data.world/associatedpress/johns-hopkins-coronavirus-case-tracker/workspace/query?queryid=481e82a4-1b2f-41c2-9ea1-d91aa4b3b1ac

• Find recent hotspots within your state by running a query to calculate the 7-day rolling average of new cases by capita in each county: https://data.world/associatedpress/johns-hopkins-coronavirus-case-tracker/workspace/query?queryid=b566f1db-3231-40fe-8099-311909b7b687&showTemplatePreview=true

• Join county-level case data to an earlier dataset released by AP on local hospital capacity here. To find out more about the hospital capacity dataset, see the full details.

• Pull the 100 counties with the highest per-capita confirmed cases here

• Rank all the counties by the highest per-capita rate of new cases in the past 7 days here. Be aware that because this ranks per-capita caseloads, very small counties may rise to the very top, so take into account raw caseload figures as well.

Interactive

The AP has designed an interactive map to track COVID-19 cases reported by Johns Hopkins.

@(https://datawrapper.dwcdn.net/nRyaf/15/)

Interactive Embed Code

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Caveats

• This data represents the number of cases and deaths reported by each state and has been collected by Johns Hopkins from a number of sources cited on their website.
• In some cases, deaths or cases of people who've crossed state lines -- either to receive treatment or because they became sick and couldn't return home while traveling -- are reported in a state they aren't currently in, because of state reporting rules.
• In some states, there are a number of cases not assigned to a specific county -- for those cases, the county name is "unassigned to a single county"
• This data should be credited to Johns Hopkins University's COVID-19 tracking project. The AP is simply making it available here for ease of use for reporters and members.
• Caseloads may reflect the availability of tests -- and the ability to turn around test results quickly -- rather than actual disease spread or true infection rates.
• Population estimates at the county level are drawn from 2014-18 5-year estimates from the American Community Survey.
• The Urban/Rural classification scheme is from the Center for Disease Control and Preventions's National Center for Health Statistics. It puts each county into one of six categories -- from Large Central Metro to Non-Core -- according to population and other characteristics. More details about the classifications can be found here.

Johns Hopkins timeseries data - Johns Hopkins pulls data regularly to update their dashboard. Once a day, around 8pm EDT, Johns Hopkins adds the counts for all areas they cover to the timeseries file. These counts are snapshots of the latest cumulative counts provided by the source on that day. This can lead to inconsistencies if a source updates their historical data for accuracy, either increasing or decreasing the latest cumulative count. - Johns Hopkins periodically edits their historical timeseries data for accuracy. They provide a file documenting all errors in their timeseries files that they have identified and fixed here

Attribution

This data should be credited to Johns Hopkins University COVID-19 tracking project

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.

Comparison of per capita rates for COVID-19 infection, hospitalization and death for residents across three phases of the epidemic; State of Indiana.

As of January 23, 2021, Vermont had the highest Rt value of any U.S. state. The Rt value indicates the average number of people that one person with COVID-19 is expected to infect. A number higher than one means each infected person is passing the virus to more than one other person.

Which are the hardest-hit states? The U.S. reported its first confirmed coronavirus case toward the end of January 2020. More than 28 million positive cases have since been recorded as of February 24, 2021 – California and Texas are the states with the highest number of coronavirus cases in the United States. When figures are adjusted to reflect each state’s population, North Dakota has the highest rate of coronavirus cases. The vaccine rollout has provided Americans with a significant morale boost, and California is the state with the highest number of COVID-19 vaccine doses administered.

How have other nations responded? Countries around the world have responded to the pandemic in varied ways. The United Kingdom has approved three vaccines for emergency use and ranks among the countries with the highest number of COVID-19 vaccine doses administered worldwide. In the Asia-Pacific region, the outbreak has been brought under control in New Zealand, and the country’s response to the pandemic has been widely praised.

COVID-19 rate of death, or the known deaths divided by confirmed cases, was over ten percent in Yemen, the only country that has 1,000 or more cases. This according to a calculation that combines coronavirus stats on both deaths and registered cases for 221 different countries. Note that death rates are not the same as the chance of dying from an infection or the number of deaths based on an at-risk population. By April 26, 2022, the virus had infected over 510.2 million people worldwide, and led to a loss of 6.2 million. 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.

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. Note that Statista aims to also provide domestic source material for a more complete picture, and not to just look at one particular source. Examples are these statistics on the confirmed coronavirus cases in Russia or the COVID-19 cases in Italy, both of which are from domestic sources. For more information or other freely accessible content, please visit our dedicated Facts and Figures page.

A word on the flaws of numbers like this

People are right to ask whether these numbers are at all representative or not for several reasons. First, countries worldwide decide differently on who gets tested for the virus, meaning that comparing case numbers or death rates could to some extent be misleading. Germany, for example, started testing relatively early once the country’s first case was confirmed in Bavaria in January 2020, whereas Italy tests for the coronavirus postmortem. Second, not all people go to see (or can see, due to testing capacity) a doctor when they have mild symptoms. Countries like Norway and the Netherlands, for example, recommend people with non-severe symptoms to just stay at home. This means not all cases are known all the time, which could significantly alter the death rate as it is presented here. Third and finally, numbers like this change very frequently depending on how the pandemic spreads or the national healthcare capacity. It is therefore recommended to look at other (freely accessible) content that dives more into specifics, such as the coronavirus testing capacity in India or the number of hospital beds in the UK. Only with additional pieces of information can you get the full picture, something that this statistic in its current state simply cannot provide.

As of May 2, 2023, the outbreak of the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) had spread to almost every country in the world, and more than 6.86 million people had died after contracting the respiratory virus. Over 1.16 million of these deaths occurred in the United States.

Waves of infections Almost every country and territory worldwide have been affected by the COVID-19 disease. At the end of 2021 the virus was once again circulating at very high rates, even in countries with relatively high vaccination rates such as the United States and Germany. As rates of new infections increased, some countries in Europe, like Germany and Austria, tightened restrictions once again, specifically targeting those who were not yet vaccinated. However, by spring 2022, rates of new infections had decreased in many countries and restrictions were once again lifted.

What are the symptoms of the virus? It can take up to 14 days for symptoms of the illness to start being noticed. The most commonly reported symptoms are a fever and a dry cough, leading to shortness of breath. The early symptoms are similar to other common viruses such as the common cold and flu. These illnesses spread more during cold months, but there is no conclusive evidence to suggest that temperature impacts the spread of the SARS-CoV-2 virus. Medical advice should be sought if you are experiencing any of these symptoms.

As of November 25, 2022 the number of COVID-19 cases in the Australian state of Victoria was at 40,482 people per 100,000 of the population. Since mid-2021, uncontained outbreaks in NSW and Victoria caused the government to move away from its former 'Covid zero' approach.

The economic impact of lockdown measures

In March of 2020, one survey showed that over 70 percent of Australians expected the economic outlook in Australia to get worse in the next three months. For most industries this prediction was correct, with the worst hit industries being hospitality, tourism, and gyms and fitness. However, some businesses flourished under the shift in pandemic consumer behavior with food delivery services, homewares and online gambling showing significant increases in consumption.

In March 2020, it was estimated that the infection rate for COVID-19 ranged between 1.5 and 3.5. In comparison, the seasonal flu had an infection rate of 1.3. Data is subject to change due to the developing situation with the coronavirus pandemic.

Rising infection rates could reignite virus COVID-19 is an infectious disease that continues to threaten different parts of the world simultaneously. The number of positive cases in the United States topped 5.5 million on August 22, 2020, and the potential for new waves of infection remains. In several U.S. states, the infection rate is higher than one, which means each infected person is passing the virus to more than one other person. When an infection rate is less than one, the outbreak will weaken because the viral pathogen is not as widely spread.

The importance of isolation Someone who has been diagnosed with COVID-19 can easily spread the virus to others. For this reason, patients are urged to self-isolate for around 14 days. To further reduce the risk of transmission, people who have been in close contact with a positive case should also self-isolate, even if they feel healthy. National testing programs make it easier to track the spread of the virus and are helping to flatten the infection curve. The U.S. had conducted more than 70 million coronavirus tests as of August 24, 2020 – the states of California and New York had performed more than any other.

Around 282 thousand new cases of COVID-19 were reported in the United States during the week ending November 11, 2022. Between January 20, 2020 and November 11, 2022 there had been around 96.8 million confirmed cases of COVID-19 with over one million deaths in the U.S. as reported by the World Health Organization.

How did the coronavirus outbreak start? Pneumonia cases with an unknown cause were first reported in the Hubei province of China at the end of December 2019. Patients described symptoms including a fever and difficulty breathing, and early reports suggested no evidence of human-to-human transmission. We now know that a novel coronavirus named SARS-CoV-2 is causing the disease COVID-19. The virus has been characterized as a pandemic and continues to spread from person to person – there have been around 642 million cases worldwide as of November 17, 2022.

The importance of isolation and quarantine In an effort to contain the early spread of the virus, China tightened travel restrictions and enforced isolation measures in the hardest-hit areas. The World Health Organization endorsed this strategy, and countries around the world implemented similar quarantine measures. Staying at home can limit the spread of the virus, and this applies to individuals who are only showing mild symptoms or none at all. Asymptomatic carriers of the virus – those that are experiencing no symptoms – may transmit the virus to people who are at a higher risk of getting very sick.

Total costs and probabilities used as model inputs for estimating the cost-effectiveness of strategies to improve infection control for Covid-19 in a university setting with 16,000 students and 4,500 employees on campus during a 90-day semester.

Major assumptions used in modeling the cost-effectiveness of strategies to improve infection control for COVID-19 in the university setting.

Early detection of SARS-CoV-2 infection is key to managing the current global pandemic, as evidence shows the virus is most contagious on or before symptom onset. Here, we introduce a low-cost, high-throughput method for diagnosing and studying SARS-CoV-2 infection. Dubbed Pathogen-Oriented Low-Cost Assembly & Re-Sequencing (POLAR), this method amplifies the entirety of the SARS-CoV-2 genome. This contrasts with typical RT-PCR-based diagnostic tests, which amplify only a few loci. To achieve this goal, we combine a SARS-CoV-2 enrichment method developed by the ARTIC Network (https://artic.network/) with short-read DNA sequencing and de novo genome assembly. Using this method, we can reliably (>95% accuracy) detect SARS-CoV-2 at a concentration of 84 genome equivalents per milliliter (GE/mL). The vast majority of diagnostic methods meeting our analytical criteria that are currently authorized for use by the United States Food and Drug Administration with the Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) Emergency Use Authorization require higher concentrations of the virus to achieve this degree of sensitivity and specificity. In addition, we can reliably assemble the SARS-CoV-2 genome in the sample, often with no gaps and perfect accuracy given sufficient viral load. The genotypic data in these genome assemblies enable the more effective analysis of disease spread than is possible with an ordinary binary diagnostic. These data can also help identify vaccine and drug targets. Finally, we show that the diagnoses obtained using POLAR of positive and negative clinical nasal mid-turbinate swab samples 100% match those obtained in a clinical diagnostic lab using the Center for Disease Control’s 2019-Novel Coronavirus test. Using POLAR, a single person can manually process 192 samples over an 8-hour experiment at the cost of ~$36 per patient (as of December 7th, 2022), enabling a 24-hour turnaround with sequencing and data analysis time. We anticipate that further testing and refinement will allow greater sensitivity using this approach.

As of January 13, 2023, Bulgaria had the highest rate of COVID-19 deaths among its population in Europe at 548.6 deaths per 100,000 population. Hungary had recorded 496.4 deaths from COVID-19 per 100,000. Furthermore, Russia had the highest number of confirmed COVID-19 deaths in Europe, at over 394 thousand.

Number of cases in Europe During the same period, across the whole of Europe, there have been over 270 million confirmed cases of COVID-19. France has been Europe's worst affected country with around 38.3 million cases, this translates to an incidence rate of approximately 58,945 cases per 100,000 population. Germany and Italy had approximately 37.6 million and 25.3 million cases respectively.

Current situation In March 2023, the rate of cases in Austria over the last seven days was 224 per 100,000 which was the highest in Europe. Luxembourg and Slovenia both followed with seven day rates of infections at 122 and 108 respectively.

Early detection of SARS-CoV-2 infection is key to managing the current global pandemic, as evidence shows the virus is most contagious on or before symptom onset. Here, we introduce a low-cost, high-throughput method for diagnosing and studying SARS-CoV-2 infection. Dubbed Pathogen-Oriented Low-Cost Assembly & Re-Sequencing (POLAR), this method amplifies the entirety of the SARS-CoV-2 genome. This contrasts with typical RT-PCR-based diagnostic tests, which amplify only a few loci. To achieve this goal, we combine a SARS-CoV-2 enrichment method developed by the ARTIC Network (https://artic.network/) with short-read DNA sequencing and de novo genome assembly. Using this method, we can reliably (>95% accuracy) detect SARS-CoV-2 at a concentration of 84 genome equivalents per milliliter (GE/mL). The vast majority of diagnostic methods meeting our analytical criteria that are currently authorized for use by the United States Food and Drug Administration with the Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) Emergency Use Authorization require higher concentrations of the virus to achieve this degree of sensitivity and specificity. In addition, we can reliably assemble the SARS-CoV-2 genome in the sample, often with no gaps and perfect accuracy given sufficient viral load. The genotypic data in these genome assemblies enable the more effective analysis of disease spread than is possible with an ordinary binary diagnostic. These data can also help identify vaccine and drug targets. Finally, we show that the diagnoses obtained using POLAR of positive and negative clinical nasal mid-turbinate swab samples 100% match those obtained in a clinical diagnostic lab using the Center for Disease Control’s 2019-Novel Coronavirus test. Using POLAR, a single person can manually process 192 samples over an 8-hour experiment at the cost of ~$36 per patient (as of December 7th, 2022), enabling a 24-hour turnaround with sequencing and data analysis time. We anticipate that further testing and refinement will allow greater sensitivity using this approach.

COVID-19 was first detected in Brazil on March 1, 2020, making it the first Latin American country to report a case of the novel coronavirus. Since then, the number of infections has risen drastically, reaching approximately 38 million cases by May 11, 2025. Meanwhile, the first local death due to the disease was reported in March 19, 2020. Four years later, the number of fatal cases had surpassed 700,000. The highest COVID-19 death toll in Latin America With a population of more than 211 million inhabitants as of 2023, Brazil is the most populated country in Latin America. This nation is also among the most affected by COVID-19 in number of deaths, not only within the Latin American region, but also worldwide, just behind the United States. These figures have raised a debate on how the Brazilian government has dealt with the pandemic. In fact, according to a study carried out in May 2021, more than half of Brazilians surveyed disapproved of the way in which former president Jair Bolsonaro had been dealing with the health crisis. In comparison, a third of respondents had a similar opinion about the Ministry of Health. Brazil’s COVID-19 vaccination campaign rollout Brazil’s vaccination campaign started at the beginning of 2021, when a nurse from São Paulo became the first person in the country to get vaccinated against the disease. A few years later, roughly 88 percent of the Brazilian population had received at least one vaccine dose, while around 81 percent had already completed the basic immunization scheme. With more than 485.2 million vaccines administered as of March 2023, Brazil was the fourth country with the most administered doses of the COVID-19 vaccine globally, after China, India, and the United States.Find the most up-to-date information about the coronavirus pandemic in the world under Statista’s COVID-19 facts and figures site.

Among the ten major virus outbreaks in the last 50 years, Marburg ranked first in terms of the fatality rate with 80 percent. In comparison, the recent novel coronavirus, originating from the Chinese city of Wuhan, had an estimated fatality rate of 2.2 percent as of January 31, 2020.

Alarming COVID-19 fatality rate in Mexico More than 812,000 people worldwide had died from COVID-19 as of August 24, 2020. Three of the most populous countries in the world have reported particularly large numbers of coronavirus-related deaths: Mexico, Brazil, and the United States. Out of those three nations, Mexico has the highest COVID-19 death rate, with around one in ten confirmed cases resulting in death. The high fatality rate in Mexico indicates that cases may be much higher than reported because testing capacity has been severely stretched.

Post-lockdown complacency a real danger In March 2020, each infected person was estimated to transmit the COVID-19 virus to between 1.5 and 3.5 other people, which was a higher infection rate than the seasonal flu. The coronavirus is primarily spread through respiratory droplets, and transmission commonly occurs when people are in close contact. As lockdowns ease around the world, people are being urged not to become complacent; continue to wear face coverings and practice social distancing, which can help to prevent further infections.