Three days after breaching the half million mark, the world continues to grapple with a pandemic that has now infected more than 600,000.
The Center for Systems Science and Engineering at Johns Hopkins University, which is collating real-time data from various governments and global health monitors, showed in its interactive map that the number of people tested positive with COVID-19 has reached over 600,000 today around 0900 GMT.
RELATED STORY: COVID-19 cases in PH reach 1075, death toll now at 68
As of this writing, 177 out of 195 countries are already infected with the respiratory disease. It has claimed 27,889 lives. The number of recovered patients recorded were 131,854.
The exponential rise came from the United States, which also crossed the 100,000 mark and now accounts to a sixth of the world’s COVID patients.
The top countries with most number of cases are:
United States – 104,837
Italy – 86,498
China – 81,996
Spain – 65,719
Germany – 53,340
France – 33,414
Iran – 32,332
United Kingdom – 14,751
Switzerland – 13,138
South Korea – 9,478
A British biostatistician and professor at Cambridge University however cautioned comparing data of each countries.
Sheila Bird said nations have different reporting standards, different approaches to testing and different approaches to tracing cases.
READ ON: WATCH: How COVID-19 damages the lungs of positive patients
Some countries lack testing and only test those who are severely ill. In Germany, anyone who shows flu-like symptoms in the past 114 days or travelled to a high risk region gets tested. In South Korea, there is free and easy access to testing to anyone a doctor deems needs it.
She urged governments, scientists and the media to be more focused on the trend of the data. As soon as the testing kits become more widespread, the data of diagnosed patients, mortality and recoveries will be more reliable on the infection rates.
