COVID 19 update 11 April 2020

COVID-19: UPDATE on 11 April 2020

Evolution from 4 to 10 April 2020

By Didier BERTIN

1-Absolute figures

For better assessment we have selected 6 countries: The USA, Spain, Italy, France Germany and the UK where the virus is the most active with 66.3% of the world contamination and 76.25% of the total related deaths.

This underlines how much the Covid-19 concerns the western countries and specially these 5 main western countries and thus for the time being we are far from a global phenomenon.

The substantial increase in contamination is mainly due to the USA where the pandemic has started later with 209 288 new cases in six days. The USA represent near 38% of the whole world increase. The contamination in the UK increases also substantially and is now approximately at the level of Spain, France and Germany regarding new cases meanwhile the increase is slightly slowing down in Italy.   

From 4 to 10 April contamination increased by 48.4% mainly in the 5 above mentioned countries whose increase was 46.5%. New cases in the world were 554 766 out of which 359 341 from these 5 western countries i.e. 64.8% of new cases.

 It is highly meaningful to notice that these 5 countries concentrate 76.8% of the related death cases worldwide. The number of death cases was mainly generated by the USA, Spain, Italy, France and Germany with 67 407 dead people i.e.65.3% of the total related to Covid-19 death cases in the world.

2- Relative value figures

A-Cases

Of course figures are more meaningful in relative value i.e. weighted to neutralize the effect of the size of the population of each country. We have considered the number of contaminated and death cases for 100 million people for each country.

We may see now that Spain is the worst case by far in contamination with 342 000 cases for 100 million inhabitants and Italy is far behind with 246 692 cases for 100 million inhabitants, France being ranking unfortunately third due to bad management of the crisis. USA despite the jump of cases ranks still behind France.

B-Death cases

For 100 million inhabitants Spain ranks first and Italy is not far. France is doing much better with a figure which is 57% of the figure of Spain. USA has finally a much lower figure on the basis of 100 million inhabitants and is still in a better situation that the main European countries despite the media’s comments in France.

C-death ratio

This figure is a good assessment of medical efficiency in the field of equipment and expertise. In the world the situation worsens with a ration of 7.9% as compared to 5.4% six days ago probably because the increase in number of cases has a saturation effect on staff and equipment. Germany is still the best European country in this respect with a ratio of 2.23% and the USA is not doing so well but remains in a satisfactory level of 3.72% despite the French media comments. Spain, France, the UK and Italy have figures of between 10.08% and 12.8% i.e. much more that the world average of 7.9%, which are not at all in line with expected performances in  western developed countries.

3-Conclusion

The high death ratios in Spain, Italy, the UK and France which are the main contaminator of Corona-19 show a “de facto” lack of investment, equipment and staff in number and expertise at the highest level together to a clumsy political management.  

In addition in France we lack of pragmatism necessary in emergency and the country suffers of rigidity in the medical and political field up to delaying an existing treatment at the cost of many lives putting national economy and welfare at high risk. After years of efforts to increase the number of jobs the wish not to take responsibility may create a long run and substantial unemployment.

We must underline the fact that the quarantine added to endless news from media and constant alerts from the State on the same topic may endanger the psychological health of citizens on top of the viral problem that may legitimate immediate investigations at the highest level of authorities, of the Parliament (Senate and House of Representatives).