The novel coronavirus pandemic has now infected 1,002,201 across the globe, a milestone that was attained nearly five months after the first patient was diagnosed in China. So far, 53,641 victims have died while 208,129 have recovered in what has turned out to as the biggest global health disaster in 100 years.
It would be recalled that when the virus first surfaced in Wuhan, physicians and governments across the world took it lightly as many compared it to the Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome, otherwise known as SARS, that infected about 8,000 people in the early 2000s. Extremely infectious and showing little or no symptoms on its victims in many instances, coronavirus virus has thrown the world off balance. So far, only 18 countries in the world are yet to record any infection.
But here is the caveat, many observers and medical analysts have argued that since scientific and medical discoveries have shown that the victims of the virus usually present few or no symptoms of the disease and coupled with the fact that overwhelming majority of the countries in the world have failed to carry out wider and comprehensive testing, the exact number of those who are infected in the world may be far higher than 1 million.
While the pandemic started in the Chinese city, it has become a global crisis. According to the data drawn from the media, government agencies and the World Health Organization by John Hopkins University, the United States of America now has the highest number of infected patients with 245,380 with 6,095 fatalities. Next on the list is Italy with 115,242. However, Italy has the highest death toll with 13,915 casualties.
Spain comes third on the list with 112,065 cases, 10,348 deaths as the European country recorded its highest single day number of deaths since the outbreak, with the total rising by more than 1,000 in 24-hour.
The most disturbing trend in the data is that while it took the world 43 days to arrive at 100,000 infections, the world reached a 1 million milestones within 28 days!
In the United States of America, the country continued to deal with how best to stop the pandemic outbreak as more than 250,000 Americans were believed to be infected on Thursday. It is expected that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention would encourage all Americans to wear cloth masks in public but President Trump said on Thursday that such a order will not be mandatory.
Also disturbing is the fact that health care providers in US, Spain, Italy and France have been sounding the alarm for weeks over a shortage of ventilators and protective equipment, but drugs are now reportedly in short supply.
While the number of sick and dead continues to increase, hospitals warn that certain vital medications, including drugs used to keep the airways, antibiotics, antivirals, and sedatives safe for patients, are starting to run low.
The world grappled with the reality of a catastrophic economic downturn as the U.S. experienced arecord daily death toll. With controversy raging about the full severity of the coronavirus pandemic, Australia’s chief medical officer said early Friday that the global cases were potentially five to ten times that of official estimates.
Meanwhile, new study by a prominent group of experts advising the British Government indicates that the novel coronavirus could now infect as many as one in 15 people in UK
The study, released on Tuesday by the Coronavirus Response Team of Imperial College London and published in the Lancet, found that between 1.2 per cent and 5.4 per cent of the UK population could already have been infected by March 28.
So far, 33,718 cases have been reported officially in UK while 2,921 patients have died.
With world travel crippled and millions under some sort of lockdown as a result of government attempts to control the outbreak, the health crisis has also become an economic one: in the first half of 2020, the global economy is projected to contract by 2 per cent. Business investment in several industries has come to a screeching halt, with forecasts that in the second quarter the global unemployment rate will hit 47 percent.
As the world trudges on in uncertainty, addressing the plague that has stopped the wheel of progress in the world requires unity of purpose as the global crisis requires global response.
But if the responses are ambiguous or used incorrectly, then the similarities are inaccurate.
The figures and terminology also give a false sense of accuracy, when the statistics on the infected numbers of people we have reveals just a fraction of what is happening.
