Late week Wuhan coronavirus numbers

On Thursday and Friday (April 2-3), new reported cases of the Wuhan coronavirus in Spain continued substantially to outstrip those in Italy. Today, April 4, Spain’s total number of reported cases passed Italy’s. In both countries, the number is around 120,000 reported cases.

Italy’s death count is higher than Spain’s, probably because the virus hit Italy first. However, Spain’s total might well surpass Italy’s some time this month.

In the U.S., we have around 290,000 reported cases and we’re closing in on 8,000 deaths. Yesterday’s total of new reported dead — 1,326 — was considerably larger than the previous high — 1,049 two days ago. There’s a good chance that we’ll very soon see 1,500 deaths per day and, before long, 2,000.

The IHME’s forecast that U.S. deaths from the virus will come in under 100,000 may well be optimistic. Italy, which is thought to be several weeks ahead of us, has seen its daily death count level off recently. However, it isn’t decreasing appreciably. In the past few days, the totals are (from least to most recent) 812, 837, 727, 760, 766.

Germany has lately been reporting new cases in numbers that exceed Italy’s count and approach Spain’s. Oddly, as we have noted in the past, the number of daily deaths in Germany from the virus remains very low, comparatively.

Yesterday, for example, Germany reported 168 new deaths, compared to 684 in the UK, which has fewer than half of Germany’s reported total cases. The total number of reported deaths in Germany is only 1,275, compared to 3,605 in the UK.

It may be that Germany is using an idiosyncratic methodology to determine who has died from the Wuhan coronavirus. Differences in methodology are a hazard in any transnational comparison.

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