World 17 million USA 4.5 million Brazil 2.5 million India 1.5 million
One month ago there were just over 10 million recorded cases of COVID-19 worldwide, four million of them were active and there had been 500,000 fatalities. Cases were increasing by one million each week. Now we have over 17 million cases, almost 700,000 fatalities and around six million active cases. Infections are increasing by almost two million every week. The number of recorded cases is growing fastest in the US, India, Brazil, Colombia, South Africa, Russia and Mexico.
Of course these are just the recorded data. There are millions more people across the world who have no access to a COVID test let alone health care. This article details how many cases are potentially going undetected. The study in the US state of Indiana found that the actual rate of infection there could be eleven times higher than the official figures. In Australia it could be potentially five times higher.
After two days with a reduction in numbers the reproduction rate is almost back down to 1.00 which is meant to be a sign that we are on top of this second wave, but in the past 24 hours Victoria recorded a massive 723 cases of coronavirus. This is by far the worst daily total to date. It’s 3.6 percent of the 19,921 tests that were conducted yesterday. Most of the cases are related to people who are still going to work when sick or before they have their test results, as well as in private aged care homes.
Yesterday the Premier Daniel Andrews announced that from now on, all people who test positive will be door knocked by Australian Defence Force personnel and state health officials to conduct tracing interviews, double check people are at home and to follow up if they have needs. From 500 people door knocked over recent days, 29 people were not at home isolating.
We’ve been wearing masks for a week now, so I hope that this will make a difference to these numbers soon. Masks will be mandatory for all Victorians from midnight Sunday.