Are any other world countries likely to overtake the United States in per capita COVID-19 infections?
I have a friend of mine in Sweden and she told me she's been living close to normal life since they didn't shutdown like the rest of the world. Moreover, another friend of mine in New Zealand told me they're back to living a normal life as well. Living in the USA has caused a lot of paranoia and I actually wanna know if there are any other world countries likely to overtake the United States in per capita COVID-19 infections?
Answers ( 2 )
It's hard to have any straight answers now, with numbers reported being even more questionable than they were before Trump insisted on reports being made to his administration before the CDC. But with existing data, Brazil has been second to the US in numbers, and per capita infections.
Below is a chart for August 14, 2020 which shows the current numbers for the last workday for this week. As you can see, Brazil is the closest to the US by rate of infection and deaths. India is coming up hard and fast but they are still at half what the US is but they are doing more testing than Brazil, so they would still be third.
We in the US are in quite an extraordinary circumstance with the politics overriding the science - it's wrong, it will continue to be wrong, and that will be the reason that the US will likely remain in a worst-case scenario.
I'm answering this a second time, to update information as of January 3, 2021. (answers can't be edited after acceptance).
Yesterday Coronavirus cases worldwide reached over 85 million cases, and 1.8 million lost their lives.
In the US, the case numbers top 20.9 million, with over 358,000 deaths to date. Just yesterday over 2100 US citizens lost their lives to COVID-19.
Okay, those are the facts to date - what has changed is that India is now the second-leading country with cases at over 10 million. And 266 deaths yesterday. Now, while the numbers are high for new cases, their mortality rate is lower, much lower than the US. Brazil is now third, and the mortality rate for them is just behind the US. So, India is second for new and total number cases, Brazil being third there. But for mortality rate, Brazil is second to the US.
But just to note, from just a glance at the charts, the recovery rate in India is higher than the US, same with Brazil - both countries have fewer active cases by comparison and higher numbers recovered.