If you follow headlines for COVID-19, you may have heard that the USA, India and Brazil are the top 3 countries suffering the most from the COVID-19 epidemic in terms of total cases. When visualizing deaths per capita as opposed to just total deaths or cases, a new set of countries rise to the top.
A tale of two countries
From May to July, India and Peru had a similar amount of COVID-19 Cases, but then in August the case counts for India exploded and currently trails the USA with the most number of cases. With 1.3B citizens, the deaths per capita has been relatively low for India, and they’ve never ranked in the top 15 countries with the highest deaths per capita.
Peru on the contrary has been in the top 15 countries with the highest deaths per capita since June, and as of November 1st stands at number one. Over 1 in 1,000 Peruvians have died of COVID-19.
Over 1 in 1,000 Peruvians have died of COVID-19.
Is 1 in 1,000 concerning?
To answer this question, let’s compare this rate to cancer. Cancer is a deadly disease that has no cure, and as such research is constantly being funded to find a cure. 9.5 million people globally died of cancer in 2018.
This means that .125% of the world’s population died of cancer in 2018. Comparatively, .1% of the Peruvian population has died of COVID-19 since March. If things continue this way for the next year, Peru could have more deaths after a year due to COVID-19 than due to cancer.
