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Why is Covid-19 mortality 300 times higher in the UK than in Singapore?

2020-08-28

It would appear as though Covid-19 is curable, but confusion surrounding the illness prevails

We were introduced to the virus SARS CoV-2 at the beginning of the year. The novel virus was described as aggressive and extremely lethal. Moreover, the World Health Organization noted that it gave rise to the illness now known as Covid-19. 

We were told that we lacked adequate preparation for pandemics and that this caused severe stress for medical professionals. As a response, several field hospitals were built globally.  Additionally, media outlets around the world would often show reports of mass graves being built and used to bury the deceased. The daily death toll reports caused headlines for months. 

Today, we have more data surrounding the illness. It’s noticeable that certain countries have a significantly higher number of Covid cases than others.  

If one looks at the data provided by Johns Hopkins, it’s apparent that the case fatality rate is 300 times higher in the United Kingdom than in Singapore. Below is a summary of the data:

The data is from the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. Data retrieved on 3 August 2020. 

You can find a summery of the COVID-19 pandemic death rates by country which is based on the data from Johns Hopkins https://coronavirus.jhu.edu/region. Go to the table and set it to ‘case fatality rate’. You will then see that Covid-19 is a deadly virus in certain countries, but not in others. 

Instead of only discussing how we can decrease the number of infected persons by testing, tracking, usage of face masks, closure of schools, visitor bans,  quarantine, and a possible vaccine, we should also investigate how the countries who have managed to cure the illness went about doing so.