Which countries are doing best and worst in tackling the coronavirus? Is Britain really doing that badly?
Of course, it depends on how you measure this.
Do you use the number of confirmed cases which depends massively on the testing regime in that nation? Or the number of deaths confirmed as caused by or involving Covid-19? Or the number of excess deaths over and above what would be expected for the time of the year compared to the average for say the previous five years?
And what period of time are we talking about? The situation now or say on the basis of a rolling seven-day average? Or from the beginning which might be when we first knew about the virus or when a country first had a confirmed case or when a country first had a confirmed death?
And, finally, of course one has the take the raw data and express it as some proportion of the population of different nations.
The figures compiled for the site Our World in Data are based on a rolling seven-day average and are updated daily. On Monday, the British rate was the worst in the world at 4.54 deaths per million per day. It has since slipped down the table.
Nevertheless, Britain’s status as one of the worst-hit countries continued to be underlined from Office for National Statistics (ONS) data released on Tuesday, which showed there had been 53,960 excess deaths in England & Wales from the start of the outbreak to 15 May. Scotland recorded 4,434 excess deaths between 23 March and 17 May and Northern Ireland recorded 834 excess deaths between 21 March and 15 May, giving a total for the UK of 59,228 up to 17 May.
So the number of excess deaths registered in the UK during the Covid-19 outbreak has almost reached 60,000, Whichever way you look at the statistics, Britain currently has one of the worst records in the world. We had the warnings from Italy and Spain and we were supposed to have one of the best health systems in the world, but we have been failed by our political leaders.
If you want a richer source of relevant data for all countries updated constantly, check out the Worldometer site.