INTERNATIONAL – For France and its neighbors, the time is deconfinement cautious. Many European countries are slowly starting to reopen activities, schools, parks and restaurants. The European Commission should even propose a “gradual and partial” lifting of border restrictions.
But that doesn’t mean that the Covid-19 pandemic is behind us. Already, because the coronavirus still circulates on the territories. But above all, because “although the situation in Europe is improving, in the world it is getting worse”. This is the warning cry launched on Tuesday 9 June by the leader of the WHO, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus.
The number of confirmed cases worldwide, now over seven million, has increased by more than 100,000 in nine of the past ten days, and even by 136,000 on Sunday, “the highest toll so far,” he said. precise. Almost 75% of the new cases registered on Sunday were in 10 countries, mainly on the American continent and in South Asia.
Our video at the head of this article helps to better understand the shift in the epidemic around the world, since the appearance of the coronavirus Sars-Cov2 in China. Pakistan and India, for example, which are beginning their deconfinement, have seen the disease progress sharply in recent days, as have Brazil and Peru.
Comparison between countries over time is necessary to understand the evolution of the pandemic, while many states are considering deconfinement, despite an increasing number of cases. But you have to be careful not to compare anything, no matter how.
Read between curves
The key thing to look at is mostly the evolution over time rather than the exact number of cases or deaths. Indeed, these data are necessarily more or less biased according to the counting methods of each country.
To make this video, we have chosen to rely on the figures consolidated by Our World In Data, managed in particular by researchers from the University of Oxford and reference by many scientists (we have also smoothed the daily figures by achieving an average over 7 days, in order to have a more readable reading of the graph). But, whatever the quality of this synthesis, it does not erase very clear biases which invite to read these figures with caution, as specified in our video.
The number of cases listed is therefore totally dependent on the screening capacity of each country. For example, during confinement, France has very little tested its population, unlike Germany, which means that a large part of the infections went under the radars (a situation which has changed since the deconfinement ). In Brazil, experts estimate that the number of cases could be up to 15 times higher due to the lack of massive screening in this country of 210 million inhabitants, recalls the AFP.
If we take into account the number of daily deaths this time, here too, there may be similar biases. For example, the number of deaths in France seems to explode at certain times to go back down: it is simply that deaths in Ehpad are not announced every day. In addition to these elements, the delay must be added: several days, even weeks, can separate the moment when a person contracts the disease, develops symptoms, goes to the hospital and then dies.
It is therefore better to focus on the evolution of these long-term figures, an evolution which allows the epidemic to explode, but also to ebb in different countries. Or start again on the rise, as in Pakistan or Iran. This dynamic confirms that although some countries in Europe and Asia have successfully contained the virus, the future is still uncertain.
See also on The HuffPost: How to control an epidemic, instructions for use
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