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Confirmed cases per million people around the world as of April 1, 2020. Illustration by Wikipedia.
01 Apr 2020

COVID-19 cases per million not the same thing as total amount of confirmed cases

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The US, China, and Italy (in that order) have the highest number of coronavirus cases in the world, according to an article in Business Insider.  But an analysis of coronavirus cases per capita — the number of cases per million residents — in various countries reveals a different story.

Switzerland, not China, topped the list of COVID-19 cases per capita, with 1,340 cases per million people. It's followed by Spain, then Italy, according to the Business Insider article published on March 26.

In Wikipedia´s corona tracker, as of April 1, 2020, we can see see the following graph over amount of confirmed infected people per million inhabitants:

 

Confirmed cases per million people by country. Photo: Wikipedia
Confirmed cases per million people by country. Photo: Wikipedia

 

From the graph, we can see that for instance that the US, Australia Canada, Germany,  France and Sweden are in the same roughly "mid level" category of infected people in relation to their population. (Between 100 - 1000 cases per million.)

Italy, SpainSwitzerland and Belgium top the list of the world´s most COVID-19 dense countries with a concentration of more than 1000 cases per million people. 

Some other number that stand out is that Greenland, with just over 50 000 residents, has the same general concentration of 100 - 1000 infected per million people.

Iceland, on the other hand, stands out as having more than 1000 cases per million people. Iceland´s population is also very small, about 340 000 people.

Mexico and India are both in a category of only 1- 10 confirmed cases per million.

China, with their close to 1,5 billion residents,  is in the category of  only 10 - 100 confirmed cases per million people.